


The Lizardfolk Interludes

by Varynova



Series: The Slashfic Conspiracies [1]
Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Airships, Alcohol, Alternate Universe - 1980s, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - High School, Canon Compliant, F/F, Gen, Implied Sexual Content, Limericks, Mental Health Issues, Not Canon Compliant, Piercings, Steampunk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2020-06-05
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:48:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 22,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22547308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Varynova/pseuds/Varynova
Summary: A collection of the short stories, flash fiction, and vignettes I've written set inKrootox'sDungeons and Dragons campaign, The Lizardfolk Conspiracy. It also contains a number of related AUs and noncanonical musings, likewise all starring my player character, Nylth Keth. Also included are miscellany like song lyrics, in-character letters, and dirty limericks. (Other player characters and NPCs used with permission from their players/the DM.) Peppered throughout are the wonderful illustrations of Nylth that have been provided to me byChayandFunn.Use theChapter Indexto navigate to specific content.
Relationships: Original Drow Character(s)/Original Tiefling Character(s)
Series: The Slashfic Conspiracies [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1655965
Kudos: 3





	1. Of Creature Comforts, Of Fears Deferred (Introductory story, non-canon)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nylth attempts to discover why she's been passed over for a promotion. Surely that kindly old librarian would never have some kind of... vendetta?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This short story was what got me back into writing in the first place after a seven-year hiatus between creative projects! Our campaign was originally set in a traditional D&D universe (as opposed to the steampunk airship magitech setting we opted for later), so many parts of this story-- the general setting and structure of the church, the existence of non-drow elves, Nylth's status as a cleric of Mystra, and others-- should be considered non-canonical. (She didn't even have wings yet, as it wasn't an airship campaign.) Either way, it was the first deep-dive character backstory document I wrote for Nylth, and the origin point for long-term campaign NPC Bruk (who also changed radically after this point).  
> This story was originally released on 19 May 2019. The illustration at the beginning was created by [Funn](https://twitter.com/funn_ybone), and is used with permission.

_That was the last lock I’ll ever pick, I think. At least, with the hopes that I’ll gain from it._  
It happened four days ago, now, only two of which she has spent sitting in the rotting dirt on the floor of this awful cell.

“Nylth is our acolyte, and has earned her place in our intellectual stables, solely by the necessity of circumstance. She is capable, even adroit, at our needs for her, but furtherance of her duties without checking any disastrous impulses could accelerate the decline of our status: that without denomination we are without repute, and without keeping cleanly to our traditions we misplace our capacity to serve a distressed populace.”

The Tiefling’s bruise-blue brow furrows as she leafs through the many papers kept by Interpreter Kenrist. Nylth Keth, stocky under straw-colored priest’s robes, sets her lockpicks atop the study desk in the alcove of the darkened bedroom. She has practiced every footfall of this caper-- from her bunk in the Penitent’s dormitory, across the Sanctuary balcony of the venerable old stonework church, up into the administrative hall and through to the Interpreter’s quarters-- but now her mind has scarpered and her thoughts have gone blank.

A shuffle of movement in the corridor; she rolls together the letters again, rebinding them with the looping twine and breathing on the wax seal to mould it back into innocuousness. _No time to read the reply now,_ she ponders. _I’ve pressed fate enough just breaking in once, and I shouldn’t risk it again._ She steps into the hallway. _I knew that no news for so many days meant bad things. But this…_  
A dwarf, flaxen-haired and scale-clad, rounds the corner just as she secures the door. Nylth bows her head, shuffling past, but he stops and turns.

“Sister Keth. Or, erm, herrm… as you citydoers hierarchicalize it, is it...”

“Kin Tørslund, you needn’t worry.” She carefully mouths the monophthong, smiling lips pursed around assurances. “We term those in my position ‘Healers’, if we have no vocation in the four Wings. I’ve just come from your room; I mustn’t offend, but I’ve tidied your tossed papers and straightened the linens.” _I’m not even lying,_ she thinks. _I finished in his quarters early to excuse my presence on this side of the building._

The sage twists his wrist in a quick, conciliatory gesture. From his throat escapes a raspy, pitched chuckle. “You’re kind. I studied Hieromancy and the Divine Lithography to get away from all these… hemm, pulpy things, then it’s nothing but correspondence and revisions that I handle daily regardless. May Thautam bless your misplaced treasures.”

“No big. And may Mystra find your misplaced glasses.”

The dwarf pauses, eyes quizzical. But Nylth has already tossed her hood up, around her forehead and horns, with a deft roll of the neck. She listens to him pad away, past the door she’d left from, and into his own room, reserved for visitors of the Wing-heads.

She walks the staircase up to the balcony ledge unhurried. Every pace of this place-- the Temple of Three Pillars, just across the plaza from the Emeryville market, her home of fifteen years-- reeks of incense burned and prayers muttered to its three primate gods, as much at this time as any other. Nylth lowers her head, poking it over the banister to gaze down into the sanctuary proper, to view the services ongoing. This evening, she judged from the coarse, itchy-looking robes Confessor Adelin had garbed in, plus the near-total silence of the front half of the church, was a service to Ilmater, the Suffering Martyr. The priest flicks the censer over his shoulder, in time with the woody peal of a small bell.

Adelin’s predecessor had brought the orphaned Tiefling here, at the age of about four. San Parthenic met her in the street, where she had been begging for coin for whatever orphanmaster would let her in for an evening’s rest, like the rest of the street-children. He had knelt down, proffered his hand with a smile, and walked her to her new life in the church, the first of many inscrutable, trustworthy gifts.

She palms the holy symbol in her pocket, a stabbing of seven star-spokes extending around and through a blue-painted wooden circle. She withdraws over the cool stone of the balcony’s edge, careful to not let her face show to the congregation. The window overhead-- balanced scales and a long road juxtaposed over a round sunrise-- shines with the last evening rays, bathing the whole space in warm orange light. _Like me, like this place. Lots of beliefs, many influences, symbols, but nothing coherent; I can’t work with this. Goddess of the Weave, show me your weft._

_I need an evening to think._

\--

But scratched into the slate at the foot of her bunk was a curt message. ‘Confessor Jannah’s office seeks Healer Keth, before the eleventh hour.’ So she wheeled around, and padded back out past the crowd of acolytes getting ready for their evening prayers and rest.

 _Even without her Tyrian vestments, Jannah must still tower over me,_ Nylth mused to herself as she cracked the door to the first office in the Confessor’s section of the Administration hall. There was seated a woman, with gray, military-short haircut framing a laughlined face atop a long, angular neck, at a low desk. Her vestments pronounced her Wing-head of Pragmatics, among the leaders of the church, with the red hammer of Tyr emblazoned in the center of her torso. But when she saw the junior priest open the door she smiles warmly.

“Jannah, evening, hello,” Nylth bowed half a bow, but paused, abruptly unsure of why she had been summoned.

“Good evening, Acolyte Keth,” Jannah said, as slow and precise movements raised her body from her reading materials and brought her to rest leaning against the front edge of her table. She beckoned a hand toward the two high-backed chairs adjacent to the door, facing her.

 _Even so, she’s got four inches on me. How’d I never notice that? Gosh._ Nylth seated herself, legs drawn in against the wooden front of the chair, and drew her hood back from around her hair and ears.

“I must insist, however, that as you’re here to discuss operational matters, that you refer to me by the proper title, as your Confessor.” She issued a solemn nod.

“Yeah. Yes, hello, Confessor Jannah, I am in your service this evening. What can I do for you?” The girl rolled a shoulder under the bulky frock, trying not to fidget. _This better not be about… no, nobody saw me._

“I just wanted to let you know that we, ah, the Wing-head council has...” Nylth listened with care, expecting a prewritten treatise, but Confessor Jannah paused to collect her thoughts. Her head cocked slightly, she bit the inside of a cheek, and she started again. “I’ve been the Wing-head in charge of personnel here for fiveodd years. And you were there, you recall when it happened, and you saw what everyone else saw; but do you know why I became your Confessor, how I took up the mantle of leadership here?”

Nylth’s slight eyebrows bowed. “You were appointed as the only logical successor when the previous Confessor retired and the Temple needed a new one.”

“That is the mechanism, yes.” Jannah’s long, thin fingers reached up toward her face, thumb and forefinger pinched together. “But in terms of the reason why, the way I became the person who could do this job.”

Nylth shook her head mutely, bright eyes and thin mouth without expression.  
“I sacrificed, and Tyr provided. I worked selflessly for decades, saw in myself nothing I couldn’t give to my community, and built up those parts of myself I needed to to do so faster, more completely. And Tyr rewarded me. Tell me, if you hadn’t been called here, what would you be doing, right now?”

Nylth cast her thoughts back to the book Elren, the church’s Ministrator and head potionmaster, had lent her, the first of three volumes on alchemy and herbalism.

“You’d be reading,” Jannah answered in slow, confident cadence. “Knowledge not for the sake of self-improvement, but to tinker with, correct?” Nylth nodded an affirmative. “Mmhm. Time for yourself, yes. But there is no time for you, child. There is time for Tyr. Think on that.” The tall woman stood, turned away, raised a hand to her chin. But after a step she came around again, eyes probing the Tiefling for recognition.

Nylth mirrored her movements, raising herself on two legs and crossing her hands behind her back. “Is this about my training, with Watchful Dobrun? If my time isn’t my own I half expect you to demand that we cease my martial education, or that you wish to tell me that you will...” she grimaced, and resettled her weight on the heel of one foot. “That you might instruct him to cease working with me. But my duties for the week are done, and I haven’t shirked; so I hope that’s not the case.”

”I could stop him, if I wanted to.” The gray-haired paladin nodded with resignation on her brow. “My word defines the actions of everyone in this temple. But you need the outlet, and he has a good relationship with you-- just, please…” Nylth saw Jannah biting her top lip, a telltale sign she had spoken too frankly. “Just, please, accept what you are given. Tyr provides.”

The Tiefling’s ruby eyes narrowed to thin slits. “This is about the petition Confessor Adelin put forward, my proposal to refit the archives with modern library methods. I’ve seen--”

“Yes, it is. Your ‘proposal’, so called, was to accept the premature resignation of our illustrious Interpreter solely so that you could take up the position.” The Confessor’s sharp nostril-lines flared and glowed in the dim light. “I could not accept.”

The blue cleric’s eyes fell to the floor as she nodded once, and again. Her shoulders slumped. “So that I could finish the work he refuses to!” She found herself touching her tail, willing it not to judder and lash behind her. Fingertips of one hand ran amongst her crown of overgrown hair, black like Ministrator Teregast’s pet ravens, and combed the chin-length strands back abutting her short spiraling horns. “The whole system is in disarray. You’ve been down to the subbasement, too, you know it’s a mess. He barely even reshelves individual volumes, and hasn’t upkept some of the more delicate tomes in months. It needs someone to just care for it, to take each piece of the whole and put it back in its place. He always looks like he resents having to do his job so much, that I hoped I could finally…” She took a sharp breath. “That I could do the thing I’m meant to do. But if you won’t--as you say--put me where the Divines tell me I should be, why do you permit me to stay? Here, in the Temple?”

A look of bewilderment took over the careful visage of the Confessor, a downpour of concern wracking her forehead. “You must understand. You’re fine enough at what you do. Your presence is a gift to us all, but you don’t need to take on more, and you’re simply not suited to the thoughtful rigors of library work. I’ve discussed this with the relevant members of our hierarchy and it’s agreed that you are not yet suited to it. That’s my decision. You may go, Acolyte Keth. With Tyr.”

“And you with Mystra.” Nylth gazed once more at Jannah’s downcast face, flipped the hood up on her cowl, and turned to the open door. A safe distance down the hallway, she whispered to herself in the Infernal language. _If I’m not yet suited for it, who in the hells else might be?_

\--

The next day was a pleasant one, warm and overcast, and on the wide, gilded steps from the market up into the city proper Nylth sat alongside a stubby-legged, rugged-faced boy, with his cloak untied around his waist and his bulging pack plopped haphazardly by the wayside. He drew from under his cloak a linen-wrapped block of hardtack, with handfuls of bright red and yellow berries pressed in all sides of the bundle, and cracked it down the middle, pouring half into his tunic’s lap. The other half he rewrapped only enough to not dump to the pavement before his long reach shuffled it over to the exasperated healer, who accepted it and tucked it to a more subtle place out of view. “Just beat him up,” the roundcheeked youngster said. “They can’t kick you out, right? And it’s not like they’ll make more work for you, because that’s more work for them. Just, y’know, hit him hard enough that there’s no way they’ll let him keep his job.”

Exasperated, lava-toned eyes followed a leisurely cloud between tall nearby buildings. As always, in public, a Tiefling must watch her surroundings, keep her horns, tail, and skin covered, and not make commotion. And today was no exception for Nylth, legs extended in repose on the cool stone steps. She responded, unfolding the linen bundle. “Bruk, you’ve known me ungodly-long. I’m not going to beat up the fuckin’ priest.”

His hands alternated short punches at the air. “Nobody has to know it’s you. Sounds like there’s just too much bullshitting around, and old farts chattering and whinging on about duty to the gods. What’s the worst that would happen to you, huh?”

“The goblins have a saying. Rougly translated, it means, ‘What would a larval Ankheg need to do to get thrust from its hive?’” She drew her waterskin from one hip, and craned her neck to it.

“What? You weren’t listening.”

“No.” Nylth slagged down a thick mouthful of bready paste and masticated fruit. Two fingers met at her forehead, rolling the too-short blunt black fringe just beneath her curt, twirling forehorns. She had chopped the bangs into her hair last night, as her consternation over the uninterpretable letter spilled over into her midevening reading. “But her argument was right; I can’t prove they’re holding me back unjustly, so without provocation she’ll side with Kenrist, and I don’t blame her. But I sure as hell can blame him for seeing me differently, and I have to do SOMEthing to indicate my worth to them. Since Confessor Parthenic passed some couple years ago, the only ones I know are on my side are a handful of frocks in the lower Affiliations who know me well.”

The council would never turn her out, she agreed; but they could absolutely thrust her back into the most unpleasant roles of the Sanctum and domiciles. She hoped never to have to scrub chamberpots again before her own offspring demanded it.

An elven boothworker shuffled by, redfaced, holding court to nobody at all on what would happen to the ruffian who stole his bread. Bruk’s head didn’t raise as the man passed through, a baker oblivious to the two chattering picnickers just in his periphery.

“So how does it go down, then?” he asked. “You talked to her, she says you’re not good enough because old whatsit gave his shitty old opinion, and just like that you’re screwed out of the job?” He swallowed a sour berry, barely chewed. “You’ve been breathing library mold since before I met you, and you clearly want to be able to implement this thing of yours, this new way of doing things, but he’s holding you back.” His jaw shuffled, mulling alternatives to violence. He sat up and turned to face her. “So you can show them that he’s wrong, and that you have what it takes.”

“I dunno.” Nylth watched the gutter, drawn by the sound of a scrabbling rat. Three-legged, it wrenched itself out of the nearby sewer into the tallowy dust of the ashery adjacent. Its ropelike, grubby tail rolled and coiled amongst the uneven rhythm of skittering claws. “I can’t give it up.”

She and Bruk met, she recalls, after a particularly bad brawl left him and two friends sprawled and gutsliced on the wooden floor of a tavern. Since she had been the one buying him drinks, it was nice enough of her to remove the slivered glass and quarrelshafts from his stomach and hips, she reasoned. Even after the rest of the crowd had fled either the commotion or the sight of her, he didn’t bitch that his healer was a Tiefling.

“How’s working for that gemsetter?”

At the mention of his employment, Bruk lay his head flat against the stairs, eyelids fluttering closed. “Terrible. I’d rather liberate my eyes from their sockets then have to hear another winging retort about cat-eye cuts or refraction or octagonal setting fittings.” He drew a hand out of his cloak. In it, a small gemstone glittered and danced with midday light. “At least it’s the sort of work where I can lift the fruits of it, just to show them off.”

Nylth rolled her head, and smirked at him. “You stole that? From your own workshop?”

“Well, yeah! It’s the first thing I produced that doesn’t completely suck.” He held it up to the sunlight peeping through clouds, as Nylth watched it glimmer and shine with innumerable tiny patterns. “’Smooth-cut opal cabochon’, it’s called. Y’know, they could just say ‘circle’, but no.”

“Words gotta mean shit.” Nylth shrugged, and leaned back, having finished her meagre lunch, and brushed the crumbs and dust from her habit.

“I’ll return it, work on it more, and if master Frie sees me take it from my cowl I’ll claim I didn’t know it was an issue. Besotten old dwarf.” He extended his thumb and pinky finger, and mimed a deep swig of ale. “Hey, at least you could just bail if you need to. No, you’d never take off from that undersized owlery, even though you know they don’t deserve you.” Bruk’s tongue waggled out of his mouth, and Nylth laughed, legs kicking up.

Carefully she stood, cocked her head to one side. “Na’ah. Sarcasm aside, I’ve no place else to go, save the library. Three Pillars is my home, and I stand by them, even if they take his word over mine.”

“My idea stands,” said the thief, who heaved himself up, and rolled his shoulders back with akimbo arms saluting the sun. “You only wear those big cloaks, surely you could make your way to his side of the building without knowing, and, enh--” he turned the two fingers into a knife, thrusting pointedly in the direction of her kidneys.

She brushed his hand away, and smirked. “I can conceal my face, but not the horns. No, I’d rather not give him something more concrete to hold against me; if he thinks the scornspawn was prepared to stab him through in recompense for a snub, it’d prove everyone right.”

“Suit yerself. Time for me to get back.” Hooking a hand over the stone edge of the stairs, Bruk rolled off, heading back to drudgery.

“Thanks for lunch.” Nylth stretched, sighed, and gazed around. The baker-elf charged back through, having been unable to find the two of them, still scowling and muttering. “Hey, give alms to the poor,” Nylth hollered at him as he careened by. “Who steals bread if not to eat it?”

“Fuck you, devilkin,” he murmured in Elvish.

“Up yours, ya pointy ears fuckboy,” she spat back, mirroring his tongue. She turned away from his astonishment and ascended the steps back toward the Three Pillars.

\--

That night, Nylth stalked back into the sanctuary proper after, at the behest of some visiting scholar or diplomat, delivering a missive crosstown. Far from empty, the room held some thirty congregants, finishing up evening prayers. She slipped along the periphery, mind on her own tasks. _Adelin needs the week’s batch of holy water, that dwarf needed a letter copied, and perhaps I’ll get a free moment to negotiate tasks with Acolyte Nirn to open up tomorrow evening for arms practice._ But a hand caught her shoulder, breaking her attention and turning her to face its owner: Kenrist, pockmarked face and full beard visible under his widebrimmed traveler’s hat. His grimace betrayed concern, and for a moment she wondered if she was being mocked. “I’m so sorry,” he began, “to hear of the failure of your proposal. As anyone would, I wish for the best for our archives, and...”

Nylth failed to attend to the rest of his ramblings, for her own inchoate rage bloomed across her face and down to the tip of her tail. She barely managed to wait for him to finish the meandering thought at hand before she spoke, none too quietly. “This is your fault.” She unclenched a fist, shook her head, and dragged her rucksack up her shoulders to stand tall, just barely meeting his height. “You did this, with your foolish, outdated nonsense, your need to feel important, your demand to do things the old way instead of the thricedamned right way.” She glared at him, and he stepped back, blinking. He pulled his hat from his head, rumpling it.

“But-- such arrogance, to believe that you know better! This is the way our archives have been arranged, for so many--” His tremulous voice didn’t match the volume of her own, but just the same Nylth felt the searing attention of two dozen pairs of eyes against her scalp, up her horns, down her blue neck.

“No. No excuses! You have no reason to fight me here, no possible argument to outweigh the need to just do it better. I know how!” She pulled back her cloakhood, willing all onlookers to gawk. “My life has been building to this, and despite everything you have no right to deny me.”

“I have all the reason I should need.” The Interpreter’s arms dropping to his sides, he seemed to shrink and crumple into himself. “You have a brilliant mind for languages, but you lack the inborn spark. It would be, well, uncouth. It’s not done!”

“Spark?” She took a step around him, to his left, just gazing at him for a while, willing for an explanation. “Uncouth?” His eyes followed her as she moved, watching her own. “Not done?”

“Organization, I mean. The, the mind for...”

“There is a system! We have a system! And now, I never get a chance to do it better, because--” she brings up a hand abruptly, almost despite herself. A finger extended, accused the petty being in front of her. She heard the words come out before she could will herself not to think them. “Because you had to write out those words, ‘without denomination we are without repute, and without traditions we cannot serve’. I read your letter,” she hissed, face scrunched, “I know what you’ve done.”

An infant wailed. All color drained from the world in front of her, starting with the shriveled old man and down to every last torch and windowpane behind him. Nylth willed it, for a moment, to swallow her whole, for a yawning fissure to end her. Then the venerable priest took a step to circle her in the other direction. “You could have been better than this,” he said, moments later. His face finally drew in its own anger, chin raising and lips pursed. “You could have risen above this, despite yourself, and let this nonsense matter of prestige and pomposity go. But that was never going to happen, was it, _Tiefling_?”

Nylth felt the length of his staff impact her gut before she saw it, and the air rushed from her lungs instantly. She barely maintained her footing enough to catch the end of the weapon, staggering upright again, and her fist connected with his antiquated jaw. In that moment, her eyes shone their full, wrathful red, and the fires lighting the room flickered and shook. She took another swing, finding the archivist’s shoulder, now bent on delivering as much pain as she could before the two men sweeping up from her periphery could stop her. But one of them hooked chainmailed arms underneath her armpits. They dragged her away from her adversary. The other disarmed the old scholar with his staff under their boot. Ministrator Elren and Watchful Dobrun had set upon them, and pulled them apart, and everyone else in the room receded from the ruckus to their duties and lives. But Kenrist spoke again; blood trailed from just behind his lower teeth. “Rise above your people, little girl, and you may yet live among society, with us traditionalists you so fear. Abjure the shadows.”

A voice rose above his. “We saw everything; Oefun, kindly release her.” Feeling Dobrun drop her to the ground again, Nylth bowed her head, recognizing the approach of Confessor Jannah as heralding the end of her career as a seeker of truths. But Jannah’s hawkish glare was reserved for the battered man in the red-lined robes opposite her. “I see now that your motives were more pathetic than I’d ever hoped, and that your fear of some new truth debilitated you from the basic tenets of your Orders.” She shook her head. “I tried to take your side in all this, to save our organization a heap of trouble and disorder. But you’ve forced my hand.” She raised her hand, beckoning to the man beside her. “My Confessor, I revoke my refusal of your proposed venture on behalf of Acolyte Keth. Adelin? Would you please.”

Beside her, Confessor Samek Adelin’s dark arms crossed. He stepped forward, and with a nod, gave curt instructions. “Terran Kenrist, you’re banished from these dormitories and have surrendered your position as Interpreter of this Temple. Your rights, privileges, pay, and rooms are forfeit likewise. I just can’t believe you’d level such derision-- not to mention your weapon!-- against a lifelong devotee of our church, much less one who has spent her life idolizing your position and seeking to improve our archives.”

Kenrist, still restrained by Teregast’s thin frame and juddered with falling adrenaline, let his mouth hang agape. But whatever he said next went unheard by the young Tiefling, who had already tossed her cloak up as she stumbled out onto the front steps of the church, sobbing.

The scene had already been reported to the city guard by passersby as some sort of row. When a blue-skinned woman with blood coating her fists exits the scene of a fight, responding guards frequently fail to ask questions before hauling her off to the barracks to restore peace. When Teregast and Adelin sought her in the streets, they found only the bustle of evening market traffic heading back towards the poor quarter of the city behind them.

\--

Dobrun visited her in the stinking, mudfloored jail the next day, and dropped off her personal effects, plus a few snacks to take the edge off of the prison gruel and muddy water. He gave her the news of her promotion, but while he could laugh about her beating the tar out of some backwards old fool, she merely winced at his retelling, arms and tail wrapped around folded knees and chin sat atop them. He promised more training to come, focusing on fisticuffs, in case more old priests attempted to batter her.

Bruk showed up likewise, and asked if she wanted to borrow his lockpicks to leave. She refused, even while she told him that his plan had inadvertently worked, because she knew that she deserved exactly what she had received.


	2. Those Little Things We Owe (in-character letter, canon)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is a longhand note, on the finest-quality stationery Nylth can get her hands on, tri-folded in an unsealed, addressed envelope at the bottom of her locked desk drawer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This letter is one Nylth writes after learning from a divine source what Lamellar's been up to since they last saw each other over three years ago. From an authorial point of view, it was my attempt to reconcile the (saccharine-ass) ending of the previous story with the new setting and context for Nylth's life, while injecting some much-needed lesbian melodrama into the campaign.  
> Gandryl is the player character of [Chay](https://twitter.com/RavenBohique). The illustration at the end of the chapter is by [Funn](https://twitter.com/funn_ybone).  
> Fun fact: It was released when another PC snooped through Nylth's desk in the captain's quarters.  
> (Originally completed and released on 24 November, 2019.)

Lamellar,

When I was a younger woman, I imagined that the worst dreams must be all nightmares. They’re clear-cut; you’re being chased by quasits, or you forgot to copy the forty lines of devotionals for a tutorial that starts in ten minutes, or you’re toppling uncontrollably, gyring through the sky, down, down, with no hope of ever flapping your wings again. But…

But I had the dream again, last night. I dreamt that in a righteous fury, I defended myself against the hurtful accusations Kenrist made with poise and tact, and when he swung a fist at me, I still landed two good blows before the senior members of the church descended from the rafters, plucked us apart, and fixed everything. Just like in the old morality plays I snuck off to watch in town, as a kid.

But it didn’t happen like that, not at all. I told him that I had read his letter recommending against my advancement, and in that moment he was just a small, scared fool, and I towered over him, and I…  
Ilmater, I hope he was alright. He didn't deserve any of that.

That was three months ago.

Lamellar, do you remember a time in your life when nothing fell outside of a structure, and everything just made sense? Maybe you've never felt that, and always knew that you lived within a context you could never grasp, much less control. I can't help but wonder whether it ever mattered, and you always blazed through the sky with surety despite the contradictions and messiness. I only remember you acting like it was all so straightforward, like you had solved everything.

Even when the whole hull groaned with lodged harpoons and stank with the scorch of dragonfire, I was so sure that you never knew a moment of doubt. I have this memory of you, dressed in only a wry smile, rapier in hand, swinging from the rigging onto prey below. I’m sure that this is a misrecollection, as you usually wore clothes on deck (at least when the others were around,) but that image-- your teeth and sword gleaming in the sun as you descended-- lodged itself into my mind. You never hesitated, or worried how anyone saw you. The woman I remember always knew exactly what to say to remind me that the world was mouldable in my grasp, and every word told me that even at my most profoundly shaken I’d be safely at your side. I truly believed that you could show me how strong I was, if only we had the time. And you always reminded me how, even outside of my dreams, I could find the words to coax the world into making sense again.

It's funny, because every time I have that same dream, it always feels like arguing with myself felt, after all the tutors and Confessors had gone to bed. I know all the words to say, and have the perfect reply for every barb. For as long as I'm asleep, everything I did just makes sense.

When I was a younger woman, I would have said that the worst dreams were all nightmares.

But I know now that the hardest dreams to wake up from are the ones where everything is perfect.

Teregast is a skilled healer. He’s the best, right? The best Three Pillars had.  
I hope Kenrist is alright.

The first time I had it, I was sleeping rough outside for the first time in years. My wings barely would've spanned the space, the sad little wastegutter between hovels in the shadow of the market district. After I got out of the town cells, old Dobrun brought me a sack of my things. He didn't say a word, but I saw the apologetic, weary lines drawn just under his husky-blue eyes. He couldn't even look at me. I knew what it meant, and I never went back to Three Pillars. I found a back alley and nested in for the night.

It rained all evening. I had to duck under the pitiful thatched awnings above the alleyway just to keep myself mostly dry, and somehow I kept up the vain hopes that my satchel and everything I owned might survive to dawn. I suppose it was futile to think I'd be able to lug it with me for long, though. That next morning, as I emptied the second disappointing winebottle of its dregs, I let the wideyed orphan children who woke me have at the whole of my belongings, and kept only what I could carry on my back and beltloops.

I never grew past that, did I. I fashioned myself as having moved on, as having grown up, but I was always just a street urchin. The only person I ever got good at lying to was myself. Never you, though. Nor Brük, who found me that morning, dusted me off, slapped some sense into me again. We rebuilt a ship that crashed near town, with a few other fellows eager to escape what little Emeryville had to offer them.

I tried to write you a letter, on one of the first nights we took to the skies, about being kicked out of the temple, about my new friends, about the person I'd become, about my dream. I know now that I was trying to distill the blown, muddled thoughts that newfound freedom offered me, but without knowing a destination I could send it to, I realized its pointlessness. It sits in the bottom of my desk, staring at me like a toad.

Do you recall when I killed my first person, Lam? It was a pirate, among a shipload that boarded us during a local jaunt, after you finally succumbed to my badgering and let me sneak away from home and come along. I still don't know why you did, in retrospect, knowing how you saw me: I was a doe-eyed lunkhead of fifteen years who hadn't even learned to hold a pistol yet. I was still finding my boatlegs, having just dropped that itchy sackcloth habit for the first time to stretch out my wings, when they fell out of the blackening charcoal sky like demons. I figured they must have come for me, but as you bounded over the gunwale to sever grapnel lines and deliver shot into the chest of some foolish mage, you bellowed to watch the cargo holds so they couldn't steal the crate of spices you carried for an alibi.

I dove to, with the members of your crew, and by the end of the skirmish I'd driven iron through a breastbone or two, and delivered a man down to the misty island below with a bellow and kick.

I remember crying that night, in your quarters. You gave me brandy. You ran your fingers through my hair while I, curled in a ball on your bed, stared at the stars visible from the aftcastle.

I've taken a crew of my own, now. One of them is so shaken from having taken his first life that I suspect he might vomit, either from the stress or from his overindulgence in malt beer. He reminds me of myself, those five years ago, just learning what it means for there to even be a wider world in which I had to make my mark, and of how little it meant to just want to hole up in my corner of it. I think he only knows a version of me certain enough in her convictions that she can always make the right call.

The last time we spoke, you laughed me off for being a child, because I was being childish. When you wouldn't say where your next covert task would take you, I begged you to let me come with, and rightly enough you told me that a seventeen year old cloistered fool, whose knees knocked louder than her scale mail in a fight, wouldn't survive the dangerous and uncertain lands you would travel through. I wondered if you died for months afterwards, and even as my life settled back into the little routines, these four years have passed slowly.

Sehanine has told me how to find you, though. She spoke through a prophetess, who sought me out to warn me of things to come, and to grant me sight of you once again.

All this time has passed, but in that pool, you still looked exactly the same, not a day older, no less driven by the same fervor that pulled you away from my little town. You still look good.

And now I sit, alone in the captain's quarters of my own vessel, with the last eighth of a bottle of Ilalaerian wine. I let it write this letter to you, because the little things that still connect us dug into my collarbone like barbed hooks and dragged me to my knees until I relented. I should leave well enough alone-- I should've turned down the opportunity to see your face in that shining pool, I should've let you stay away for as long as you needed to, I shouldn't even scrawl this inebriated, turgid missive in the first place-- but by now you must've figured out that these things always happen for good reasons.

Or maybe I should finally accept that I haven't grown up nearly enough for you, and that if my heart still attempts an escape from my sternum every time I hear your name I can't be the woman you need me to be.

-Nylth Keth

Postscript: Now this note shall rest with its kith at the bottom of the drawer. Perhaps I'll give them both to you, in the future, if we meet again and if you ever forgive the silly child I used to be.

_[An image of Nylth and Lamellar, together.]_  



	3. When The Time Is Right (in-character letter draft, canon)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is the letter mentioned in the previous one, crumpled up in the bottom of Nylth's locked desk drawer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This letter was originally released alongside the other one on 24 November, 2019.

~~I remember when you first kissed me, at the festival of~~ | _This sends the wrong message..._  
---|---  
I remember the week you visited me, over the Assumption of Irlain's Unbecoming, and we took in the first snowfall as it settled on the forest pines just outside of town. I asked you to sneak into the Pillars with me and you said you'd stick out like a bruised plum, so I snuck out past curfew and ran down to the dockyard in my bodystocking to find your ship. Jannah berated me for so long the next morning that I fell behind on my weekly tasks and had to forgo seeing you any other night that week, but it still all felt worth it. |   
~~Besides, I know we held off, but I pumped the forgebellows so hard that week that my fingers~~ | _NYLTH KETH, PRIESTESS OF GOND!_  
When we fought at the end of the week, and you told me that I was acting such an infant that I'd only find my death on your ship in lieu of some grand adventure, I scoffed at you, you argued with me, I gave you a piece of my mind, you insulted my faith, I cried on you... When all was said and done, and we parted ways, I wondered if you'd ever think about me again. I was mad because I was young, and because you were right; I didn't know a word of the language you barked your commands in, I'd only ever known what little gunplay you taught me, and I would only get in your way.  
~~But things have changed. I'm no longer at the Three Pillars~~ | _Really? You have to at least tell her..._  
But things have changed. I've taken to the skies, spread my wings, and I've come aboard as captain with a brand-new crew, on a ship owned by my first mate! Bruk and I have struck out for adventure. | _Who are you trying to impress...?_  
~~You'd like Deek. He's the helmsman, and he makes a mean plate of~~ | _Don't interrupt this prattle with talk of spaghetti._  
I know you never waited for me, Lam. I'm not holding out for you, either. I just hope we can [something is scribbled out so thoroughly as to be completely illegible.] | _By His light, don't go there..._  
I just hope we can find each other again, when the time is right.


	4. Bruk Caught Stealin' (vignette, dubiously canon)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nylth sits down to tell a story about her good friend, Bruk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story was originally released on 31 August, 2019. The image in this vignette is by [Chay](https://twitter.com/RavenBohique).

> ask nylth about that time bruk got caught stealin'

She sighs an immense sigh, deep like lightless ocean water. "Aah, yeah. That was... maybe two months after we met. He wasn't working at the gemsetters yet, so in his infinite fuckin' genius he decided to rob the place as one of the highest-value targets in all Emeryville."

She sits down, crosslegged, taking a rare opportunity to unsheave her feet from the leather boots so constantly at them. This is a barefoot story, the sort best accompanied by lemongrass green tea and a nightlight.

"So he breaks in without checking the guard rotation first, not knowing when the patrol will be by, in the middle of the night. But the dunderhead doesn't bring a hooded lantern, just the omnidirectional oil sort, so the guards walk by five minutes in to see him shoveling opals and onyxes into a sack having smashed one of the front windows."

"Luckily, place has a backdoor and he's wearing a full hood, so he leaves his almost-ill-gotten bag right there in the front room, bolts out the back, and instantly they're chasing his colossal ass down the backalleys between it and the financial district immediately adjacent, down under the major merchant and loan banks all down that street. He's stumpy, but he's got a fuckin' motor on him, so they're only barely catching up-- these trained guards in full chain mail who are totally unused to our stupid town getting anything worse than teenaged cultists and the rare goblin expedition-- but one of 'em hucks his spear at him and it hits him right in the Achilles."

"LUCKILY, he's wearing leather, so it only maims him, but he can't run so what does he do?? He offloads himself right into the adjacent sewergrate under the district cobbled road, but as he does he hucks his damned lantern into a breadcart on the road in an attempt to... well, I've no fuckin' clue, and he's never told me. Maybe distract somebody, maybe throw them off to not notice the lardassed malcontent laying in the gutter bleeding."

"So this cart is burning up, and luckily it's in the middle of the stone street, so this pair of guards becomes this heroic firebrigade instead, get medals from the local prefecture for their prompt response. Immediate applause despite it being past witching hour, visiting with dignitaries, announced at townhall meetings, that sort of thing-- but they completely miss the guy they were chasing, and after laying low for a few hours he drags himself 'round to me at the temple past the market square, so maybe an eighth of a mile."

"And that," she says, clanking her drained mug to the floor next to her, fingers splayed around its mouth, "is why you rob fuckin' chip shops instead of a goddamned gemsetter's shop, and always check your fuckin' guard rotations."

"Then he applied to work with them as an apprentice a week later, and they never knew it was him."


	5. Her First Primer (short story, dubiously canon)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nylth gives her... employee? Teammate? Moppet hanger-on? Friend...? Teine a gun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Teine was created by my coplayer [MiaGhost](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MiaGhost). This story was originally released on 18 December 2019.  
> Gandryl is [Chay's](https://twitter.com/RavenBohique) player character, and Cash is [Funn's](https://twitter.com/funn_ybone).  
> The illustration used in this chapter is by [Funn](https://twitter.com/funn_ybone).

A rifle is, functionally, just a cylinder of metal; explosions happen on one end of it, and on the other, dead men. Inside that cylinder, subtle grooves twist the bullet into an aerodynamic dance along a precise path, predicted as the ultimate goal of a subtle, perfect mechanism. I am the machinist, and my design foretells the fate of anyone on the wrong end of my rifle.

Begin with six-tenths of a kilogram of wood, already planed and burnished into the shape of the buttstock. I paid a pretty copper penny for real walnut, but the woodcarver already drilled the screwholes in preparation for its installation. Add one-hundred-twenty-five grams of spring steel, for the trigger main and return springs, plus the cartridge follower, and one-point-six kilograms of brass for the receiver and housing. Then take two-point-three kilograms of high-carbon, hardened steel for the barrel, the breech-loading system beneath, the lever-action. Set them on your dropcloth, prepare your mineral oil and brushes, take a deep breath, then begin.

First, say a prayer. _Gond, thou art the true gunsmith, and I but the jig in which your tool rests. Mould this metal through my hands, by thy will divine. As I was moulded by your teachings._

The barrel coalesces, first in my mind, then in the air in front of me, extruded from the brick of steel lain by my crosslegged seat. Then the receiver from brass, and each careful joist and pin of the trigger mechanism woven together inside.

_This knowledge is yours, o Gond, who spoke in subtle tongues to each disciple in your church. From nothing we have gained these talents whole, from you we learn each day anew._

They join, and interlock, meeting the lever from the bottom of the casing, and the stock fuses to the rear when the hammer slides into place. The magazine tube fits along the bottom, with the follower at the front to force the bullets back into the chamber, one by one. I have seen this process, inside and out, completed more times than I can count, moving my stack of actions from machine to machine in a great row across the workshop floor. Drilling, milling, sanding, rifling; I worked them each by hand, enough to trace each line in the schematics in my head.

_I sing your praises, father Gond, each day, for I am built to--_

Somebody crashes at my door, rapid percussive blows putting innumerable dents into my careful work. When finally my concentration shatters, I wince, and upon opening my eyes I'm confronted with a solid cube of metal, wooden stock erupting from a side of it, smothered in muddled brass and steel.

I sigh, and answer the door. It's Teine, bouncy, sunny-eyed, hand outstretched as if about to knock again. I blink at her, but before I can scold her for her timing she blurts. "You said today was a good time to show me that gun. Howzabout now?"

I shake my head. "I was somewhat in the middle of something. I thought I asked for an hour to myself-- could it not have waited ten, fifteen minutes?"

She watches me with those gigantic green eyes, sending little pinpricks running up the back of my neck.

Who am I to say that her excitement should force her to wait, I suppose. "Sure," I say, shrugging. "Now's as fine a time as any." I grab the revolver from my desk-- freshly oiled, never fired-- and a paper packet of little rimfire shells, and tuck both into my pocket as I step outside and lock my room.

\--

It takes a moment, as I walk to the starboard side of our airship, to put back together each piece of the speech I'm about to give. I've given it a time or two, and heard it dozens more, back at the temple, but this is the first time I'll be showing somebody how to shoot without a senior instructor over my shoulder. I kneel, holding the black revolver in my careful, open palm, keeping the muzzle safely pointed at sea or deck.

"This gun is your gun. I will show you how to use it, and, if I am satisfied with your progress at the end of this first lesson, and you can treat it with respect, handle it with safety, and clean it effectively, you may take it with you. Okay?"

She gives a vague nod. She begins to reach for it, as we all did before we understood, but I close my hand around it once more, and draw it back to demonstrate.

"This gun is what we call an 'open-top' revolver. It hold six rounds, at which point you will need to remove the spent bullet casings, and reload." I point to the cylinder, give it a gentle spin, but I recognize the glassy sheen in her eyes as those of a waiting child, eager to rush to the fun part. So I smile, and I flick my wrist outward, bouncing open the round drum to the sound of its characteristic snap. "With the hammer half-pulled, unlock this lever, and quickly twist your hand with the curve of the gun, and it'll swing out. That bit, the arm on which it flips, is called the crane; take care with it." I wiggle the switch, and she nods. "Your revolver is chambered for .44 caliber bullets. This is widely considered enough power to take down a horse, coming at you at full gallop."

Teine's eyes go wide, attentive. Her gaze flicks from my moving mouth to the gun, and back. I don't blame her; it's the same detail that drew me to my first pistol, just a few short years ago. I load a single brass bullet into the chamber.

She points at the body of the gun after I click it shut. She mimics the motion, hooked finger extended, whole hand jolting precisely as mine did. "How do you do that, with the--"

"Oh, I'll get Cash to show you. She's better at the flick-action than I am. Here, watch me again."

She learns quickly. Before I even hand her the gun, I see nimble fingers replicating each tiny step, from the half-cocked hammer to safely pop the cylinder to the careful extension of finger far from trigger at rest. It took me weeks of welted knuckles to finally internalize that truth, and she's seen it in minutes.

"Do not point this firearm at anything you do not intend to _kill_."

Her lips curl impishly. "So, Gandryl!"

This is the most important moment. I need to show her that there's no joking around, with this. I furrow my brow, tightening my top lip to let sizable canines show my displeasure. " _No._ "

To my surprise, she shrinks like a scolded pup, no further admonition needed. She frowns, and nods, and I sigh a deep sigh. "Good. Now, then. Always treat a firearm as if it is loaded, even if you can see that it is not. Because--" I snap the hammer back, applying the trigger with the tinny click of metal, once, twice, before...

The bullet I had chambered spins into the barrel, as planned. The hammer falls, and the crack and smoke of powder causes both of us to jump, just slightly, as the bullet sails off the bow into the ocean.

"This is not a toy." I show her how to reload it-- flipping it open, removing the spent, smoking shell, and I let her insert a new bullet as I hold the gun. But she grimaces, right hand mimicking the position of my own as I tilt the revolver over to load from the top.

"Why does it load that way," she asks, "when I hold the gun with my right hand? How does that make sense?" It's a very valid question, and I chuckle, for most students don't think to ask until their eighth, ninth reload.

"It's designed for loading on horseback, actually. It was meant to be held in your left, and load bullets with your surer hand. I'm afraid we'll simply have to make do with it as it is."

I sense her skeptical glare. "You couldn't design a better one?"

But I shake my head. "It exists that way for a reason. I may have built this one from that design, but I cannot change that which isn't flawed. Now then, open your right hand, and I'll--"

I intend to let her palm the thing, let her feel the weight as I teach her where to wrap her fingers, but already each has snuck into the precise divots inlaid into the metal handle. Her other hand travels-- palm on hammer, fingers on extractor rod, then the cylinder, playing down the black metal slightly too large for her. She'll grow into it, like I did. I had more to say, but already she fiddles with the open top of the gun, feeling the action move in asymmetric sixths, and takes up the sights. I put my arm behind her, carefully wrapping my hands over her own to guide her, make sure her first shot does not wrench or point astray. She pulls the hammer back, keeping barrel pointed at all times off the boat.

"That's good. Squeeze the trigger, don't pull the whole gun-- keep control of it at all times."

When the Tutors taught me this part, they said a prayer with it, as well, that Gond does the aiming and we are but the straight-spined agents of his will. I know Teine has no interest, so I save that part for the more spiritually-receptive members of our crew. I'm sure she'll hate cleaning it, and I'd rather not wear out her patience before we get to that.

But as the choking sulfurous stink rises from the spent drum in Teine's new gun, I can only smile to myself, proud of my fastest student, the newest instrument of his holy writ.


	6. Of Bridges Burnt and Offers Obliged (short story, non-canon)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the bleak midwinter, a young(er) Nylth receives some bad news from a 'friend'.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story was originally... never released! It was finished on 1 December 2019, but is non-canonical.

The frigid winter wind, ocean air chilled by its long passage down from the Wandering Sea, rolled off of the Ventara mountains, coating Emeryville in thick, icy fog. One week prior, the first snows had blanketed the town in a stultified calm, so artificial and thick that only the open bay doors of the town forges could blast through it. In the wake of the Assumption of Irlain's Unbecoming-- a rather bleak little ceremony, in Nylth's opinion, celebrating some martyr's suffering and gruesome yuletide death-- the town's artificers busily rearranged the lighting along the main causeways out of town, touching each translucent sphere to imbue them with a soft glow, in alternating yellows and greens, as much a festive marker as a warning to airships coming in to dock.

Even in the worst of weather, the town kept busy, merchants and stevedores loading and unloading goods all along the busy wharfs, save for one airship practically unattended at the far end, shrouded in the cold fog. Nylth always wondered why certain ships were placed closer or further; whether it was determined by free space, the whims of a harbormaster, or the unknowable preferences of captains. She had asked a friend this, once, who owned her own ship, but the only response it garnered was a shrug. In her case, Nylth had figured, she must have a habit of docking as far away from town as possible to not draw attention to herself. She had some covert role resisting the tyrannies of far-off nations, Nylth knew (in an abstract sense,) and figured it must be a dire obligation for how little time she lingered whenever she visited.

Three years prior to her own little rebellion, Nylth Keth, tiefling teenager, stood on the prow of an unparalleled skycutter, facing into the wind. The hood over her horns amply covered the tangled mass of untrimmed hair down her back, as well as her pointed ears. Dark goggles swallowed her face and eyes, and she strained to hear the voice of her companion, a woman laying on the stem of the ship, over the scurry and commotion of midday dockwork. Aside from the two of them, the whole ship was barren, crew eager to wrap up a last day's duties at port. This suited Nylth just fine; as a woman with a decade's worth of questions and a shortage of time in which to rattle them off, anything that gave the two of them more time in close proximity made her heart feel like it could beat just another day, for now.

"I'm off again." The woman speaking, Nylth's friend, was a blackhaired drow, one gray eye and an eyepatch flanking her sharp, smallish nose. She kicked her legs idly in the breeze as she examined the overcast sky. "Crew's restless; they'll need pay, and it's two good weeks' travel to the coastline where we're to meet our next agent. I need to keep their purses current with coin and their back teeth floating with ale if I'm gonna keep this rebellion on track without a mutiny." She wasn't dressed, Nylth noted, for inclement weather, but apart from the infrequent tug at the hem of her black collared shirt, the woman seemed to neither shiver nor complain as the breezes trailed over the exposed skin of her cheeks and ankles.

"And once again," the tiefling said, giving a resigned sigh as she crossed her legs to sit behind the recumbent captain, "you'll say that you couldn't dream of telling me where you're going for the knowledge it'd endanger me. Even now, after this of all visits."

"You can't imagine that they would be willing to torture you for information on nefarious operations like mine, can you? Trust me, they'll hurt anybody, even red-eyed, red-blooded Gond-fearing little hotspurs."

Nylth's expression soured. "Nobody would torture me, Lamellar. They have Truth spells for that."

"But that's the fun of it, y'see?" Lamellar stood, baring glinting teeth. Her hands came to rest in broad beltpockets resting against her slender hips. She strode down the stairs to the quarterdeck, before turning. "They'd love to just come along, set fire to your little T.P., priests and all, and cut out your eyeballs and tongue just to hear ya squeal."

Lamellar had explained once, at a time when Nylth had expressed a particular disenchantment with the institution of her raising, that she liked to call the Temple of Three Pillars 'T.P.', because when it brought Nylth's spirits down, in Lam's words, 'the place wasn't fit to clean up a bowel movement'. Nylth had laughed. At the time.

Now, however, Nylth's brow flattened as she stood, gaze cast to one side. She stepped forward to the stairs, hovering close to the other woman. "I hate it when you talk like that. You know what the Vestments mean to me, and how awful you'd feel if anything did ever happen to this place."

Lamellar sighed, and put a hand to the bulky linen mat enveloping Nylth's wings and shoulders. "Oh, come off it."

But Nylth watched her, hurt look unabated.

The drow rolled her eyes. "Fine. I shouldn't be so fresh. But once you're out in the real world--"

"I don't give a plug about the 'real world'. Tell me, or I'll worry the whole time you're gone. I'll fret, every minute of every day, until you come back to see me again. I'll be shoveling sheepshit and crying with worry." Her eyes shimmered, even under the goggles. She raised a finger. "Or, you can take me with you."

Nylth had rehearsed this moment for the whole week, from the moment it was clear she'd never get the time she so desperately craved with the elusive captain alongside her priestly duties. In fact, she had started to turn over the words in her head the moment that Lamellar had drawn her close as they watched the ceremonial flagellation of a stand-in saint, said some suave line about finally being back, and kissed her on the lips, then lingered there until the stars cleared out of Nylth's eyes and she could breathe again.

But Lamellar sidestepped the question with but a shrug. "You're very cute, Keth."

Nylth winced, like a startled puppy.

Lamellar met her gaze, and smiled a sly smile that softened when she saw the tiefling's hurt glance. "I'm not saying that to tease you. You're adorable. And when you've decided to grow up and see a bit more of what's really going on out there, come find me again. But, for now?" Lamellar turned away from Nylth in a flash. With two spry bounds, she vaulted the dark wood railing, catching the brace to scurry up it into the rigging.

Nylth cast out a hand. It sailed in a useless arc through the crisp air, unable to catch even the hem of the woman's waistcoat.

With an effortless slide down the mast, the drow canted away from it, angled on one foot some fifteen feet off the deck. Her free hand gestured wide, indicating only an empty horizon choked in billowing layers of fog, before ensuring the stability of her bicorne hat. "You have to account for yourself. I would hate to see you hurt."

Nylth cupped an amplifying hand around her lips. "Is that supposed to be some big lesson? What, are you going to break into a song, now, from all the way up there?"

"Don't tempt me." Lamellar shrugged, turning on a heel once more to skip down to middeck, out of Nylth's reach again. "You're just so... you've got your whole life ahead of you! I'd hate for you to throw all that away catching a cannonshot with your teeth. My trade margins are too thin to afford resurrecting you, 'friend of the Captain' or no."

Nylth trudged down the stairs. After a morning spent re-reconvincing two Wing-heads to let her finish her duties that evening and thus be permitted to socialize all day, this was hardly the final conversation she craved as a sendoff to a woman whose bed she had shared less than a week earlier.

"Is that what I am? Friend of Captain, end of ledger?" Nylth drew it out, spitting each resentful word. She had spent enough years, she wagered, befriending Lam, that when the time came and the kiss felt so instinctive, so easy, and so right, she naturally assumed...

"Nylth..." Lam said it like a trainer disciplining a warg, which defused Nylth's budding anger not a whit.

"That's what it'll say on my tombstone! My crowning achievement. 'Nylth Keth, she was friends with Lamellar Q'elar. Good, good friends. Kissing friends!'"

"Nylth!" Lamellar spun towards her again, incredulous sneer smeared across her face.

"Because if so, that's fine, but then I'd feel a little more entitled to demanding some friendship instead of just acting as your-- your--" her blue cheeks screwed up with annoyance as she blurted. "Your succubus on a godsdamned leash!"

Lamellar stumbled midbound, her attempt to skip past Nylth stymied with shock. She caught herself, skidding to rest halfway up the stairs to the poopdeck. She stuttered, grinning. "Now, don't you think that kinda play's a little intense for this early in--"

"All the acrobatics, the silver words, the flirty gestures, none of it means crow to me, Lamellar, if you can't tell me why any this talk even matters! You-- you kissed me! Right there, in the festival, as the procession went by! I thought, foolishly, that I might mean something to you because of that, but you won't even stand still long enough to just talk to me." Nylth's pique broke as she balled her fists, lips contorted with simmering rage. "Hell, you talk about situations where I'll die often enough, maybe you might even be trying to imply that you would feel something in that event. But no! Nothing other than 'life lessons' from the woman only three and a half years my senior, nothing so daunting as affection. Humph."

Nylth raised her arms in a huff, planting herself in the center of middeck. She watched her perhaps-suitor glide down the banister, taut brown leather pants silently buffing the burnished wood as Lamellar stepped forward, arms akimbo, presumably about to match Nylth's agitated tone.

Indeed, her stance grew broad, footfalls suddenly heavy. Her dark, throaty voice took on an edge of menace. "And I thought, clearly also foolishly, that you would let yourself enjoy that moment and wouldn't take it for more than it needed to be."

Nylth shrank back, arms falling to her sides. "I just wanted... something more, I dunno. More real, more concrete, more grand."

But Lamellar crossed her arms, growing impatience supplanting the veneer of anger. "What you wanted was to come with me, run away from all the growing up you have yet to do, and to pretend like my life is just full of mystical adventures you'd be free to share, or some goddamned fairytale like that."

"Yes!" Nylth threw her hands up, teeth gritted. "That sounds amazing. That sounds real! Unlike this place, where I spend three hours a day restocking materials for the evening rituals, straightening papers, wiping down pews."

"See, the fact that you believe my life is somehow fun and games, some wondrous and carefree flit from town to town? That's how I know you're not ready. That's why I can say with confidence you haven't learned enough about what really goes on in the world." Lamellar balled her fists, her eyes suddenly set with a scowl. Her voice bristled with icy wind. "I kill people, Nylth. This is a war."

"So let me learn out there. Why do I have to stay, if the biggest and most important lessons are out there with you, blazing between continents and conflicts?"

But the drow's expression dropped, eyes scraping the deck of her boat. "Because I can't protect you. And you can't protect yourself, and even if you didn't meet your end, you'd never understand how it changes you until it had changed you."

"You think I'm a foolish child." Nylth stared at Lamellar, stepping closer as she tried to recapture her gaze. But Lam turned away from her again, crossed her arms with a shiver.

Nylth hugged her from behind, drawing the cloak around both torsos. A steady hand fell against the arm around Lamellar's waist, and she felt the object of her embrace sigh. "I know that you are. And I'd never forgive myself if I was the person who forced you to grow up too fast, like I did, like everyone else I drag into this does."

"I promise, it couldn't change me. I'd enjoy it, growing up out there, with you."

"Nylth," Lamellar said, voice softening again. "You want to know why we spent the first night I was here talking, and didn't make love?"

"I!" Nylth squeaked, cheeks reddening. The annoyance in her voice flared, cracking enough to barely paper over her embarrassment. "Yes. I do, actually. I flew from my nightly rest to your side, to share your bed in a state of particular undress, and all I got to do was listen to you regale me with stories of some old dead captain, and to be punished for it by my Confessors come morningtime. So, yes, I would."

Lamellar laughed a dry, bitter laugh. "While I'm not much of one to respect local ordinances I have learned enough to avoid stringing along little romantics like yourself."

"You certainly brag about other conquests enough, am I not enough of a right proper baroness to be added to that esteemed list?"

"There was only the one baroness. And that 'old dead captain'-- his name was Arlan Kotter-- was my lover as well, I'll have you know. If you'd been listening at the time, you'd have noticed that little detail."

Nylth's arms tightened their squeeze around Lamellar's stomach. "...Sorry."

"Well, I hadn't ever spoken about him to you as anything other than a co-worker. It was too painful to do anything but. Even on the night we met, I guess I only mentioned him offhand."

"The guy you said you were going to replace? You called yourself the 'future captain'."

"This job has pretty high turnover, it turns out. That's why I was captain when I came back that next season, right after your fifteenth birthday."

Nylth shivered.

"He wasn't much older than I am now. But he'd been captain for a while, and had been the one who got this crew into piracy in the first place. I signed on under him, learned everything he knew, took over for him when I had to."

Lamellar peered out towards the town, watching the lights blinking on, one by one, little moonlit eyes opening in sequence to watch the two of them stand together under the mast.

"And I mourned in the best way I could, quietly, in the little downtimes between... harder tasks. But you just can't afford much time for sentiment, even on a loose-ass ship like mine, because you have to be the goddamn captain. Nobody can see it."

"And you feel like that changed you."

"No. The worst part is, I accepted it very quickly, even as... close... as we'd been. I took to the same bed he'd slept in, the night he died, and slept as well as ever, because what else could I do? Risk sleeplessness the next day, doom the crew with my own emotions?"

Nylth opened her mouth, but closed it again, and rested her jaw against Lamellar's shoulder.

"That," Lamellar said, resting her head against the tiefling's, "is why I let you come with us on your first voyage out. So you could watch that hell unfold, in small part, and be scared off from trying to join me on the life forever."

"I remember bawling my eyes out after that first fight, yeah." Both women nod with Nylth's somber reflection. "I barely understood a thing until that point, but I guess... it still didn't put me off of it, I still just wanted to be by your side."

"I wish it had."

Nylth sniffled, raising a hand to cock up her goggles and rub her eyes. The first tear dropped down her dusty cheek, one drab blue drip. "Why wasn't I good enough?"

Lamellar shook her head as she turned. She put her nose to Nylth's forehead, drawing the girl's face up to look at her, and she planted a lingering, apologetic kiss on her lips before she spoke. "It doesn't work like that, Blue. You know it doesn't."

"I don't take up much room. I could sleep in the broom closet, under the stairs."

"And I note that would mean you'd share a wall with my bed, meaning you'd never be more than five feet away from me."

"Pure coincidence." Nylth snorted a wet laugh.

"Go home, little Nylth. Go back to your life, and forget I ever visited. Stay safe and warm in your bunk and dream of the blissful heat of the forges, and fine summer days spent with that rockheaded pal of yours. Brock, or whatever. Maybe, in twenty years, I'll have successfully overturned the Empires, and I can come find you once there's peace again."

Nylth wiped her nose on the fur of her habit. "I would be, like, almost forty by then. You'd still look like a teenager, exactly as you have since the day I first saw you six years ago, and I'd be middle-aged, a withered old crone, like a boulder worn to sand by the persistent wind of time and regrets."

"Oh, don't give in to melodrama. You'd find somebody nice, you'd settle down in a wonderful, safe place, and you'd raise your kids in the church so they always knew how much you loved them. And you would never have to think about prickly ol' Lamellar ever again. Either way, you'll grow up, and move on."

"I'll never move on. Never, never. You'll visit my tomb in a hundred years, and I'll just be there under the headstone with your name on it, calling it out from six feet below the cold earth."

Lamellar rolled her eyes. "Goodbye, Nylth."

After Lamellar had gone-- Nylth would imagine, years later, apology writ on Lam's face as she trudged away, though she couldn't watch her leave-- Nylth stared off across the mountains, low peaks gradually fading under the mist toward the ocean to the north, and toward the great archipelago to the south. She watched the fog roll until the first members of Lam's crew were within sight, and recloaked herself. Nylth sighed, disembarking, and walked back towards the town.


	7. Of Utterances Upended and Thieflings Tossed (short story, non-canon)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A meddlesome child receives a due comeuppance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story, too, was not released upon completion! It was originally finished and shelved on 1 December 2019, and is not canon.

At the age of 13, the acolytes of the Temple of Three Pillars are permitted to leave the grounds unsupervised without special dispensation from a tutor. Nylth Keth had availed herself of this privilege for an entire year, and in the process of learning exactly how far she could stretch the good graces of her professors now found herself under the twinkling stars alongside the docks. The crew of a great trimast, fresh into port, set out broad braziers alongside their ship, and caterwauled the night away over freeflowing ale and ribaldry.

Little Nylth, a tiefling fourteen years of age, peeled her cloak from her shoulders, dropped off the side of the dock unseen, and flapped her tiny wings. She came up alongside one of the lower deck windows, open to the warm summer air, and squeezed inside. She opened the door to the crew berths, and strutted up the stairs to join the party as though she owned the whole airship.

But at the moment she tried to fathom the shipload of carousal surrounding her, a leather-clad hand fell heavily on Nylth's shoulder.

Nylth had spotted those black gloves before, on the hands of one of the gregarious shipmates she'd seen about town, gladhanding in the market and shelling out ample coin for provisions and liquor. The woman had been a tallish dark elf, maybe a few years Nylth's senior, with raven hair falling to her tailbone and the belt of her skintight breeches.

The black-haired drow spun her around. She spoke in barely-accented Rogmi, the trader's tongue. "You shouldn't be here, kiddo. How'd you even get onto my ship?" The tall woman slugged the last of the murky liquid from her glass, dark waves of hair falling across her face and obscuring her good eye. A flick of the wrist sent the cup overboard with a clang against the gunnel.

"The wings, silly! Are you guys pirates!?" The tiefling shifted, excitement blossoming across her face. She flexed her extra limbs, eliciting a laugh from her captor.

"Just spice traders celebrating another successful run, now beat it." Her free hand met the seat of Nylth's robes, offering an ushered trip back over the gangplank and onto the darkened gravel path back to town.

"Nah, E-ville doesn't have any spices to put out into the world other than oregano, which nobody'd buy given how the shipping costs would totally eclipse its value. Confessor Adelin says our bigger exports by far are wool, leeks, and metal goods courtesy of the church. I've never met pirates before!"

This gave the older woman pause. She'd fooled customs officials and Empire bureaucrats from here to the Aramani inlands with her patter about the spices of the Rogmi coast, and here was a precocious, winged little shit calling her on it the minute they made eye contact.

"What did you say your name was?"

"I didn't." The girl squirmed again, full, volcanic eyes falling back into those of the woman grappling her. "But it's Pilgrim Keth; Nylth, if we know each other."

"Great. Little Keth?" The grip at Nylth's shoulder kept steady, but the frogmarch paused right as they reached the dark dockside planks. "Keep to your own business. It's safer that way."

"Will you be back next season?"

"If the trade winds swing us by again, perhaps. I'll be captain by then, so it's my call."

"Then you should come back, and I'll be here to see you! I came to meet you, you know. I saw you in the market, and I've watched you come around before!"

The drow stared. "Me? Look, I'm flattered, but aren't I a little old for you?"

Nylth wriggled out of her grip, shrugging as she turned. "I'unno. You haven't changed, and I've been watching you since I was eleven."

"And now you are?"

"Fourteen."

"See, too young. Buzz off, kid."

"But you never seem to be any older!"

"I'm an elf. Comes with the skin and the attitude."

Nylth stuck out her tongue. "The barren earth swallow you up," she intoned, in stilted, rasping Nulvar, her best recollection of an old dwarven curse.

"Aaah," the woman groaned, stifling a smile. She corrected the minced oath in the same tongue. "'Barren land will swallow you whole before my nethers ever will'."

Nylth's cheeks glowed a lush scarlet.

"Next time I'm in town," the drow declared, back in the common language, "you'll know it, because captain Lamellar Q'elar will make her mark in the dockledger and on the town. Good enough?"

"Good enough! Pleasant night!" The blue girl laughed, and stepped back into the shadows of the night.

"Pleasant night, little Nylth," Lamellar mumbled under her breath, voice tinged with exasperation, as she turned back to rejoin the party.


	8. Elderflower Wine and Huckleberry Honey (short story, college AU)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A young Purdue student spends some quality time with a couple friends. Sparks may, or may not, fly. God, human AUs are weird.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This AU was written with the advice and assistance of my co-player [Funn](https://twitter.com/funn_ybone), the creator and player of the character Cash Diamond (here anagrammed as Diana McDosh), as well as the illustrations.

Just before sundown on a crisp autumn evening, a woman's broad hands steady the hunched shoulders of her companion, who continues to sway from one converse-clad foot to the other. The recipient of her attention is a short, bouncy girl, younger than she, with a black DIY bob laying in anarchic, windtousled snarls. Her quick movements and wild hair paint the picture of an agitated bichon, still riled despite repeated soothing touch. In fact, she looks about to topple over, guarded from the breeze only by the other woman's calming embrace. The two stand together on the sidewalk, dawdling just outside a neon-lit storefront window.

"I said I'd buy you a couple," the taller of the two says, sympathetic tone hanging on the wind of her southerly drawl. "If you wanted 'em, and I meant it." She bobs her head, still trying to catch her friend's scattered gaze under the dark bangs and sharp eyeliner. She raises her eyebrows, finally garnering the shorter's focus. "But Lynh, I'd hate to force you into this, and you're sure as heck not required to take me up on that offer if it's shakin' ya'. If you wanna go home, be my guest. Take a few days, think on it."

As she settles, the shorter woman exhales a steady breath, visible plume billowing up into the night. Leaning her weight back, she is easily held upright by locked knees and the bracing hands at her trapezii. She squeezes her eyes shut under round, hipsterish glasses. "It's alright, Diana. I'm gonna do this. I'm... really doing this. It's just that I've never _done_ this, so I'm just a bit skittish." She plants her feet again, hands deep in her hoodie's pocket to ward off the late-October cold, and takes a step towards the door.

"Heh. Just a bit." Diana corrects herself when she sees an embarrassed blush bloom under Lynh's eerie husky-blue eyes, and smiles. "It's alright. You've shaken it out, now. Let's go on in, but only if you're sure."

"I'm sure. Does it hurt much? And what're you gonna get?"

She laughs, swinging the door open with one hand to usher Lynh inside with the other. "Haven't decided yet. I'll pick once we're in there."

\--

Six hours earlier.

On the Saturday before Halloween, Lynh Khett sat in the center chair of a vacant windowfacing banquette, watching the football crowds throng towards the Ross-Ade Stadium. She had positioned herself to peoplewatch, right in the comfortable windowbank abutting the main artery past the Cary West dormitory. Surrounding her were innumerable atomized tables, split apart for Family Weekend, at which students stuffed their parents with the adequate grub of the Ford Dining Center, and regaled them of a first quarter's academic achievements. Purdue always hosted the Weekend over a home football game, and the throngs of latecomers trudging up from Russell Street, even after the noon kickoff, blocked the whole sidewalk shoulder-to-shoulder.

Lynh picked at her quinoa salad and brussels sprouts, eyeballs forward so as to not brush a recalcitrant gaze over the family immediately behind her, who erupted into bolts of coordinated, raucus laughter every 30 seconds like clockwork. Tipping back against her chair, she sighed, tented fingers meeting in the monopocket of her brown sweatshirt.

A hand landed on her shoulder, but the only sign of surprise Lynh gave was a sharp, inaudible sniff. Her gaze wandered the sudden appendage, examining the taut, well-worn grooves in the fingertips and the used peanut oil pooling in the rough troughs of the nailbeds.

Lynh smiled, looking at the reflection of the woman standing behind her, regarding her grease-stained tank top and ill-fit jeans. "Oh, hey! Diana. You off work? What brings you out so early?"

Diana McDosh-- a name which, once she'd given it to Lynh, had elicited no end to snorted chuckles-- had a frame built to withstand hurricanes. Unlike her own (which Lynh described to friends charitably as 'squarish' and dourly as 'a refrigerator box',) Diana's stance rung with sumptuous muscles and the well-used back of a longshorewoman. She was a good half-foot taller than Lynh, who came up barely to her chin at five feet, seven inches, and her stark-white hair had been, like every other time they'd spoken, tugged up behind her in a messy, functional ponytail. Today, however, she pulled it down as she spoke, thick waves dancing around her shoulders and playing in the diffused sunlight. Her eyes, the light brown of polished jasper stones, smiled even before her mouth did.

"Haven't seen ya' in a dog's age, Lynh, and I figured you'd be the sort to avoid the gameday crowds stead'a comin' out from campus fer grub."

Diana spoke with a distinctly smoky twang, tinged by childhood proximity to the coal mines of West Virginia. Lynh had never asked if she'd spent much time in them, or worked one herself, despite wanting to know. Still, she thought it more polite to just let the woman tell her own story rather than pry or pick apart details.

"I needed to watch some people," Lynh said. "It's nice to just be around them, and be unremarkable enough you can watch them stream by on their way to the rest of their lives."

"Must be nice. I stick out of any crowd I'm in." Diana rested her knuckles against the top of the table, and for a moment Lynh wondered if she might inadvertently take a chunk out of the flimsy chipboard bartop with an errant flex. But she eased herself into the chair next to Lynh, sighing with relaxation.

"Sounds like a curse. How exhausting is it, being that gorgeous and chiseled?"

Diana laughed, rubbing at the back of her neck with an idle hand. "Naw. I'm not tryin' to brag. I just mean that I'm taller than most."

"Hmm."

"What'cha up to today?"

Lynh shrugged, balancing the last sprout on her forktip to tip back into her mouth. "Dunno. I'm meeting some classmates in a bit for my Phonemes and Morphemes study group, but otherwise I'm prob'ly free."

"Well," Diana said, "I told my boss that I had a ticket to the game, so he advised me to take a half-day to enjoy myself. Just clocked out."

"Do you really? Headed that way?"

"I do, surprisingly, actually have one." Diana leaned over, angling her hand to mock a conspiratorial whisper to her seatmate. "And maybe I'll see some of it, y'know, mingle a bit? But it sounds more fun to walk you where you're going first, if you'll have me fer company."

"Aww," Lynh cooed. "That'd be really nice of you. Why do you wanna come along with li'l me, though?"

"Are you kiddin'? Y'know how few of these student types are willing to talk to th' help? I like you, silly. You're not a stuck-up asshole, like some a' these." She waggled a broad thumb over her shoulder to the still-seated throng, smirking.

\--

After returning her empty dishes, Lynh, with her backpack slung over one arm, rejoined Diana at the doors. She smiled as Diana led her out, stiff chill of the early afternoon greeting them both.

Diana followed her down the concrete ramp, crossing the street against the thinning crowd to follow Stadium Avenue. "Y'know, I don't think I know your last name."

"Yeah!" Lynh turned to amplify her smile into a toothy grin, taking broad backwards steps. "I've never told you. I don't tell anybody, if I can avoid it." She spun forward again, traipsing across a lawn towards the south side of campus. Weaving through a bank of trees, she ran her hands against the narrow trunks of each, thin canvas shoes evoking a chorus of complaining leafsnaps underfoot.

"Why not?"

"Just don't like to." Lynh distended the front of her hoodie with outstretched fists. "So what've you been up to since last we spoke?"

"Same ol', same ol'." Diana shrugged. "Work, mostly. How old are you these days?"

"Twenty-one. As of the start of August."

"Christ. As the saying goes, they do get younger every year."

"I'll pretend I didn't hear that, don't worry. Yourself?"

"Pardon?" Diana's splayed fingers drew up to her collarbone as she smiled a broad smile. "A lady doesn't ask, and a lady never tells."

Lynh shrugged, not even turning to look. "You asked me first."

"Fine!" Diana scoffed playfully. "Thirty-five."

Lynh whistled and cocked an eyebrow as Diana came up alongside her, and regarded her up and down again. "Good fer you."

Diana merely rolled her eyes, stifling a laugh. "Don't have to be rude. Did you do anything for yer... birthday?"

Lynh's smile turned down. "God, no. Can't imagine it. No, no." Her gaze tracked along the floor, just for a second, before she picked it up again and renewed her hasty trek.

Diana jogged, trying to keep pace. "...Sorry."

"No, don't be. I'm sorry that I'm so fuckin' dour, today; I just can't stand Family Weekend."

Passing by the smattering of frats dotting the edge of campus, Lynh rounded the corner, heading down University. Her hands traveled overhead, touching every low branch in her path, as if she could use them to launch herself away from this topic of conversation any faster. The cold biting into her bare shoulders exacerbated Diana's quick breaths as she almost matched Lynh's hurried steps.

"You don't... talk about your family much, do you."

Lynh stopped, then, standing in the middle of the sidewalk. The football crowds had mostly passed them by, with the rare oblivious black-and-gold clad trickle politely keeping distance.

She whirled on a foot. "No, I really don't. Sorry, can we... not talk about this, right now?"

But it was Diana's turn to cross her arms, lip upturned in a distinctly unamused fashion. "Excuse me? It's all you _have_ been talking about. I'm happy to drop it, but only if you'll lose the bug up your booty about it."

Lynh raised an affronted hand to a hoodstring, spiraling it around her finger and stretching the fraying ends between nervous nails. "What?"

"Names, birthdays, this weekend? It's all you're talking about. So talk about it, or I can just--" Diana pointed over her shoulder, beginning to turn with it.

"No-- sorry, wait, please." Lynh reached out, two fingers brushing a windchilled bicep. Were she less distressed, it would be a startlingly intimate gesture, but as it was she spread her palm against flesh, trying to steady the leaving woman, keep her near. "You're right, I don't get along with them."

Diana watched her levelly, politely turning to attend those wide blue eyes.

"I don't tell anybody my last name because I know they'd treat me differently. You know Khett Hall? The Khett Library Foundation?"

Diana shrugged.

"Those are both named after my dad. Arlen Khett? The one with the statues in the atrium to the learning annex? That was him. My name's Lynh Khett."

Her gaze traveled up into the scraggly tree overhead, stripped of all but a few crispy, ochre leaves. "Sounds like he must be real important."

Lynh shrank, just a little, at the shoulders, legs closing together and arms folding. "I guess. Maybe. I wouldn't know. I haven't spoken to him in years."

"But he went here, has a bunch'a stuff named after him?"

"There's a reason I got a full-ride scholarship and could come to Purdue in the first place. I can't pretend I'm not a Legacy admit."

"But you still haven't..." Diana watched Lynh's head cast down, and when it rose again, she saw the single tear out of Lynh's eye.

But Lynh set her jaw, eyes suddenly clear, expressionless. "My parents disowned me, Diana. When I was fourteen."

"Fourteen. Gawd. Fer _fuckin'_ what...?" Diana extended an embrace, returning a gentle squeeze to Lynh's upper arms. Lynh saw only a flicker of the sympathetic wrath on the older woman's face, but smiled regardless.

"Well, they caught me kissing a girl in the back of her car..." Her lips twisted with the sour note.

"Wait, her... a car... and you were fourteen?"

"She was a bit older. The point is, when your dad accuses you of 'courting Satan' when all you've done is hang out in the back of a beat up Camaro, no matter what happens you grow up pretty quickly. I've made my way ever since, and I had plenty of help and found my own community. But it's not like I'd refuse to take up a free pass to a place like this, so I guess I can never really escape the family name."

Lynh's grimace had softened, slowly, to merely a frown, and she took tiny steps closer until Diana had her wrapped in both arms, held her close to her chest.

But Diana laughed to herself. "I swear to god, if I ever meet the man I'll crack his ass in half. Satan? What's that got to do with shit?"

"It's kinda funny, isn't it? They knew I had pretty different views on God than they did, but even when they pushed me away I never exactly stopped sharing their religion. I still wonder if all that got bottled up, and when I ended up not being as... straight... as they expected, it all just exploded out. I got a lot of chewing out over the fate of my immortal soul, y'know."

"Rrreally?"

"I may not look like it, but I'm pretty big on God." Lynh smiled, embarrassed, like she'd just revealed an affection for Nickelback or AM radio. "I thought about it a lot, but I never lost faith, weirdly."

"God...?" Diana shrugged into the hug. " _God._ I mean, I can't really say I ever put much thought into all that. Prayer and hopin' he'd turn out results for me has never really... worked out."

Lynh laughed, muffled by her own hand at her mouth. She rubbed her cheeks. "Hah. No, I get it-- that's the thing. It's not about changing the world that you have, right? Nobody has that power, we can't see the big picture. We gotta trust the plan, because a watchmaker doesn't need to let the gears understand the whole picture for the thing to run in perfect harmony. That's us; pieces of a larger, meticulous puzzle, and I find that beautiful, I guess, or comforting. Maybe that sounds silly, sorry."

"Naw, it's fine! That sounds really nice. And I bet it makes you happy."

"I mean, it's not like the fire and brimstone Old Testament shithead of my parents religion makes any sense. Their God and my God clearly aren't the same thing. The Trinity, confessions, grace, repentance-- it's all just cover for their invective. They just need to think they can control the whole world, and that it all needs to make sense to them, and so they try to wring that out of religion because it makes them feel better."

"They tried to wring it out of you."

"Yeah." Lynh straightened her back, returning the hug for a brief moment before backing up, and dropping her hands to her pocket once more. "At least they don't have sway over me; I'm glad for that, actually. They can't control what I do, or how I look, or who I love."

Diana's mouth curled into an undefinable smile, somehow out of Lynh's reach and inside her head at the same time. "I never pegged you for the sort. I had always just assumed you were a regular kid. Guess there were signs, though."

"I am a normal kid," Lynh protested with a shrug. "What do you mean, signs? My hair? The makeup?"

"Your ears aren't pierced," Diana said, thoughtfully.

Lynh rubbed her detached, rounded earlobes, fingernail finding the familiar freckle right in the center of the left one. "Piercings, huh. Funny you should mention that, actually."

"Funny?"

"Never mind. Just a-- passing thought."

Diana arched an eyebrow, a look of kindly concern spreading across her mouth. "Have you never had a piercing? Shoot, but it's so much fun! Is that something you feel like you're missin' out on?"

"Missing out?" Lynh gave a queer, tense smile, incredulous. "Of course I'm not missing out. I'm just clearly not the sort of person who could just walk into... I mean, I've never thought about it."

"Turns out the only thing that makes you that 'sort of person' is doin' it."

"No, you don't get it." Lynh shook her head, biting at her upper lip. "I can't."

"Can't?" Diana tilted her head, hand traveling to her hip. "Listen, I know a guy. Works at the tattoo place uptown. If it's about money, let me buy ya' a couple. Least I could do." She said it with an effortless nonchalance, eyes closed, shrugging.

But Lynh's neck shrank, chin disappearing into her hoodie. "It's not... I appreciate that. Thanks for the offer, but I might... think about it for a while. Thanks."

Diana nodded, not unkindly, and gave a soft smile. "I absolutely understand. Think about if you'd find it fun."

Lynh's fingers crept up one arm, fixing the hanging strap from her backpack over her shoulder once more. "And I, uh, I'm a bit late for my meeting, so I should..."

Diana rubbed her bare arms. "Oh, yeah. I am cold as SHIT out here, so I'd better go."

Lynh smiled apologetically. "Do you wanna... borrow my sweatshirt, or something?"

"Aww, toadstools. Na'ah, I’d hate for you to get cold, and it’s not like it’d fit me anyways. I'll be awright, I left my jacket at work like a damn fool. Well, I'd better go get it, and you'd better get to your meetin'. Have a good'n, and think about my offer. No pressure, though!"

They waved amicably, heading their separate ways.

Lynh pulled out her phone, and sent a quick text.

\--

"Sounds like you've got a bit of a crush, Boss." Across the dorm room from her desk, in a great beanbag chair, sat Lynh's hallmate and a constant interloper on her open door. Gerald Rylandsun, short, appreciably portly, untrimmed, blue-dyed hair mounded in a messy bun behind his head, was a Master's student in the school of Engineering in one of the Aerodynamics and Propulsion laboratories.

"Don't say that crap," Lynh sneered, pointing a pair of accusatory plastic chopsticks plucked from her open carton of takeout shrimp lo mein. "She's nice to me, and we talked about trauma shit. It's not like that."

"She invited you out to go get your ears pierced. What, you think that's the sort of thing a big sister would do? C'mon. It's totally a date."

Lynh had met him-- when she was just a prickly first-year-- in an applied physics course during a group exercise, but unlike the other men in the program he had nodded eagerly and taken good notes instead of scoffing her off to finish the work themselves.

"C’mon, it totally is the sort of thing a sister would do, though!" She shrugged. "It is _not_ a date."

"Did you ask?"

They agreed in retrospect that she had been overexplaining whatever term was in question, a result of her highschool overeducation in physical mechanics, but the first time he jokingly called her 'boss', it had sounded like a term of endearment instead of condescension or dismissal. He frequently joked that it was his Vermont upbringing that allowed him to codeswap between 'haughty prick' and 'good friend' when sorely needed.

She shot a skeptical glance in his direction. "Did you assume _this_ was a date?"

"No!" He threw excited arms into the air, with a slight laugh. "Because your text screamed 'red alert, I'm buying you chinese food for dinner because I need to talk to you about a girl,' which is about as far from the context of 'date' as you can get, even if I didn't know you were..." he motioned around his neck like loosening a necktie.

Lynh just stared, utterly nonplussed. "What?"

He scoffed, and shook his head. "Are you gonna do it? Whether or not it _is_ a date, I mean." He rested his fork against the corner of his plastic dish, emptied of orange chicken.

"I dunno. It sounds like kind of a silly frivolity, right? Ear piercings. I'm totally not the sort of woman who needs different dangles every evening. Heck, I'd really only go for it if I could get something a bit more edgy, y'know?"

"So why not do that?" He raised an eyebrow. But she sighed in response.

"I mean, it sounds like a fun activity, but what if it isn’t my first choice? What if I'd only be doing it to see her, and she'd be thinking she was doing me this great favor towards my 'self expression'?"

"Then ask her. If she's serious about it being a friendly thing, she'll turn you down, because it's not the end of the world to ask if something's a date when you thought you were going to just, like, see a movie, or get dinner as friends."

She blinked. "Wouldn't this be a little pricey? For a date, I mean. Seems like a lot to pay for a few puncture wounds."

"Eh, the jewelry can be. The hole's the cheap part, but the trick is knowing where to put it. Anyway, I say you should go for it, because it sounds like you're just making excuses for yourself, now."

Lynh huffed, but Gerald shook his head.

"C'mon. You'll definitely find something that you think looks good on you. Plus, even if she says it's not a date it'll save you the money..."

But she cut him off. "Must be easy for you to say; you've got a cush job lined up killing civilians next year, for a cool quarter-million-dollar salary."

"It's public tech sector! It's not military. Why do I have to keep explaining this?" Gerald smiled as he undid his black vest, one piece of formalwear which, along with his blue hair and goatee, made him something of a double-oddity among the usually tight-wound, conventional STEM students.

"Lockheed-Martin is not fucking public sector. Unless you count the fact that they're--" she heaved her blackpainted nails in a sarcastic pair of airquotes-- "'defense contractors'. And then you'd have to admit it's basically a military job."

"I don't need this." Gerald chuckled. He stood from his slump atop the formless gray mound of a chair, tossed his vest down onto it, and dragged it with him. He nabbed her outstretched carton, now empty, tossing both in the garbage on the way out the door. "It sounds like you know what you want, though."

"Yeah. Yeah, I think you're right. Plus, c'mon, I already know what I'm gonna get." Lynh smiled wanly. "Thanks, Gar'."

She undocked her phone from the wallwort charger, and tapped into the barren, awaiting text-field. “How’s tonight for you,” she read aloud, thumbpecking each arduous letter. “I’m in, but only if it’s a date.”

\--

Nighttime falls fast, blanketing the streets in the warm light cast from the windows of the brick buildings along the long road from downtown. Diana, her double-breasted, square-shouldered trench coat sweeping the street and swaddled in a scarf, adjusts her baseball cap down tight to her scalp. It does nothing to keep the wind off, of course, but she'd be damned if she went anywhere but work without it.

"I actually swapped, last term, into the Linguistics department." Lynh, placing a careful thumb under her sweaterhood, drops it back against the neckline of her jean jacket to brush her hair behind an ear. She leans it into the evening air, showing off the fresh adornment for Diana's benefit: three silver rings, two in the upper curve, and one in the lobe. "Mechanical engineering was just too much of a boy's club." She drags her hand along the brick half-wall separating them from the little apartments to the north of campus.

"I guess that makes sense. What with that class you mentioned earlier, Phones and Memes?"

Lynh laughs brightly. The nervous energy she entered the piercer's with has transmuted into a pixielike sway, suffusing her body with motion as she walks the starlit street. "Phonemes and Morphemes. The components of words, in sound and construction."

"See, I'm glad you understand what that is, because that sounds like it's above my pay grade. I'm glad you swapped, then. You never really struck me as the engineerin' type."

"Then you've never seen me with a CNC Router. I haven't touched one in a while, sadly, but I bet I could still get shit done in a makerspace. It's just not my _true_ calling, y'know?" She taps her temple.

Diana shrugs.

Lynh continues. "So hey, that's the story of what brought me all the way up to West Lafayette from Monroe, but how about you? What made you stick it out in this town if not the University?"

Diana scratches her scalp, right under the red and white paneled ballcap. "Aah, it was the University, sorta. It was years ago, but there was... well, I'd just broken up with this guy, see."

"Yeah."

"And he was utter garbage, made me wanna just ditch the whole state of dubya-vee for fear I'd see him again and cave his teeth in, so I decided I'd cast a wider net." Wall and sidewalk disappear as the pair cut south to walk a bypass road. It winds around to meet back up with one of the main arteries across campus, passing under colorful dogwood trees by little homes.

"Uh-huh?"

"And it turns out, when your dating app goes out to a five-hundred mile radius, you meet a lotta int'restin' people that way. And one was a young lady by the name of Daisy."

"Ohhhhhh." Lynh's voice lilts and falls like a lockpick jinking a final tumbler into alignment. "And she is..."

"Was," Diana says, with a defeated shrug, "just a very nice girl. I'd hate to drag on with specifics, what with this so pointedly bein' a date, 'n' all, but it ended under somewhat... somber terms."

Lynh nods with reverence, watching her feet as she walks.

"Anyway, she lived out here for a while, an' whether or not she still does I found the place charming enough to put down some roots." Diana sniffs, catching the scent of the cool night breeze. "Worked all sorts'a odd jobs since then, and that suits me. Good fer free time, if nothing else."

Lynh laughs, but a bitter bolt of cold passes them by, and she winces slightly, shielding her ear.

"Y'alright?" Diana puts a caring hand to her shoulder. "You toughed through all those like a trooper. Hell, I was surprised when, after all them earholes, you still grinned at Deacon and said you was gettin' your nose done, because 'you'd rather heal 'em all in at once'?" She appraises Lynh for a moment, letting her pace falter slightly before catching up with long, slow strides. If nothing else, she had underestimated the young woman's tolerance for pain.

"Yeah!" Lynh grins, finger rubbing her lip just under the new nostril stud unconsciously. "Why not let the endorphins do the work?"

A low chuckle escapes Diana's throat. "Endorphins, shoot. I knew when I promised I'd get somethin' done with ya' that I'd only be getting the one." She sticks her tongue between her teeth, half-teasing, half-reminding Lynh of the broad bead now implanted in the center of it. It elicits a glance and a giggle. "It's still mighty sore, and I assume yours are too."

"Aah, just a little." The shorter girl's hands drop to her sides, finding her jacket's pockets. "Guess the excitement wears off and leaves you just a little achey, yeah."

"That's the part I usually use whiskey for."

"Did'ya know I've never tried whiskey?" Lynh frowns. "Or any of it, really. My family has a bit too much of an affinity for booze, so I'd rather not tug that particular tiger's tail. Without responsible supervision, of course." She wrinkles her brow.

"Hm." Diana cups the curve of her thumb under her chin, watching Lynh as she keeps step. "Affinity, huh. Well, sorry fer bringin' it up, then." She nods.

"S'no big. Ask me a question!"

Lynh guides her down a sidestreet, and they sweep south along the golf course, cutting through it past the stadium.

"What's yer name mean? It's spelled real funny, I caught a glimpse of your license when you was givin' it to Deac."

"Ohh, sure." Lynh rolls her shoulders, bounce coming back into her step. "Well, my idiot parents decided they wanted a kid with a really unique name, so they named me Lynhdh," she says, gently teething the soft 't-h' against her tongue. She spells it out, and Diana laughs incredulously. "Yeah. Like 'Linda', but... Gaelic, I think? We're not even Irish. Just a pure bastardization."

"Shoot, wish I had that good a'story on where mine comes from. I think my momma just read too many Diana Braund novels."

They wander by the parking areas, now devoid of gameday traffic, and through the big playing fields by the student residences.

"Fun fact, Diana Tremain Braund didn't start writing until 1998, so I don't think that checks out." Lynh nods sagely. "Unless you picked up that name after then."

"Huh! Never thought about that." Another deep chuckle. "That is a fun fact. Well, I haven't a darn clue, in that case." She glances around. "Geez, we must be gettin' close to your place, huh?"

The lyrical dance in Lynh's arms speeds up, and she shoots a look over her shoulder. "Ooh, I know a shortcut. Follow me." Lynh's lip curls, and she weaves her hand into Diana's without ceremony. Before she can even look down to process the gesture, Diana lets herself be dragged down an offpath, into one of the windowless side tracks between two of the square brick dorms. While plenty of students still trudge the main paths towards campus at this time of night to get a late dinner or find early parties, Lynh had directed their course someplace relatively hidden from passing view.

"I bet you know--" Diana starts, rounding the corner of the building at Lynh's insistent pull, but before she can finish the thought, Lynh stops, and doubles back. She tilts her head to one side playfully, and takes another step. Diana falls onto her back foot, and rests against the wall with the back of her coat.

Lynh glances up at her with those impossibly huge eyes through those blocky glasses, and slowly extends her arms to flank the taller woman's torso, placing her palms against brick.

Diana purses her lips, stifling a laugh. "Shortcut, huh." She sets her gloved hands on the denim at Lynh's shoulders, keeping her grip loose, relaxed.

"Of a sorts." Brushing her prominent canines with her tongue, Lynh smiles, smug.

"Too inconvenient to do on your doorstep? Too much paparazzi?"

"Didn't feel like waiting." She hesitates, though, for just an instant. "S'this okay?"

Diana gives a deep nod, breaking into a full grin. "More'n okay."

At the full extension of her tip-toes, Lynh can just barely close the gap between their heights, clasping her lips against Diana's with her eyes squeezed shut. At this distance, she smells a little like some undefinable medley of berries, something earthy, pleasantly sour. Diana lets it fill her lungs, enjoying the moment where time seems to slow down, and her only expectation is to spend this instant with the pretty, spry young lady so unexpectedly kissing her. Lynh holds it, letting all the potential energy just... hang there, in the crackling air between their coatclad bodies, in the seconds between warming breaths. But as the slightest snorted laugh escapes Lynh's nose, Diana's smile flickers, just barely, with discomfort.

But she catches herself, biting her lip to fondly chide Lynh. "Well, ain't you just a good Christian girl, now!"

Lynh giggles, shoulders bouncing and lip bit. "I'm not a Shaker, gawd."

"A whut?"

"Never mind." Lynh closes her eyes again, bringing the unpierced side of her nose against Diana's in an attempt to press their lips together once more.

But Diana abruptly brings the shorter woman to arms length, wincing. "I'm sorry, I really shouldn't be gettin' kissed by nobody..."

Lynh's eyes go wide, and she shrinks a little. "Oh, no! Did I not-- should I have been more clear about that? I thought..."

"Naw, naw!", Diana lisps, waving off the misconception before embracing Lynh's lower back with a splayed, confident hand. "Nothin' like that! I just got my tongue pierced, remember? It hurts. You might be a little gentler, is all."

Lynh rolls her eyes with a smirk. "Fine. Don't use your tongue, then; use mine."

"Much obliged."

Diana's palms cup Lynh's cheeks, bringing her close again for another gentle, careful kiss. She will deliver her home safely, in a minute, but for now, Diana chooses to enjoy the act of making someone happy, just by being near at hand for that space between the moments.

  



	9. A 1902-character John Hughes Joke (flash fiction, highschool AU)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hasti sits Nylth down for a talk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by a... similar event that happened in character. (For what it's worth, yes, Nylth _was_ being 'a total wad'.) Silas and Hasti belong to [Kroot](https://twitter.com/Krootox).
> 
> I originally released this low-effort silliness in a single Discord message, on 3 February 2020.

Music, JohnHughesmovieish, reverbs the halls of Emeryville High. The banners say 1989, and bookish Nylth, shy, velmahaired, sits at a lunchtable in a packed gymnasium. Fifteen feet of table unoccupied around the toxic reader.

A tray clacks and Nylth jumps, dropping rumpled copy of _Sexing the Cherry_. Hasti, tight black ringletperm bouncing against sepia skin of bare sloughsweater shoulders, sits. She gives a broad smile, shining teeth bared. _Like a used-car salesman about to strike_. Pennywiseish.

"So what's your damage?" She points an accusing, limp fry at Nylth, tosses it into her mouth.

"Nuh?" Nylth smears. Her mouth hangs open, audible gearbox downshift in her mind unprepared for human.

"My boyfriend. You were kind of a dick to him, right?" Hasti coils her jellybracelets into one thick multicolor spiral, fingerrolling. _Long fingers_.

Nylth knows the rumors. She wonders what Hasti did for them, then discards the urban legend out of hand. Stick to facts. "Silas. Oh, I mean, he was kinda weird the other day. Didn't say anything to him, though-- I thought he was trying to get a rise. Like, make fun."

"What would he be making fun of?" Hasti rankles one eyebrow, quizquestioning.

Nylth thinks. Bangs, eyes, shoulders, hips, breasts, jeanjacket jeanstyles smile laugh mouth wordchoice librarylife. "Dunno, it was just weird."

"He was trying to be nice. You were being a wad."

Oh. Oh? _Oh_. It wasn't a tease, it was a proposition. His smilingteeth, not sharp but kindly, taking a pass at an afterschool special showing athisplace. Hastiwillbethere. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm sorry, you're right." Nylth nods. "I've been a _total_ wad."

"Tell it to him, not me. He's off detention next period."

I willspring wellspring new ideas, thoughts, fascination? If he wasn't teasing, then...

Then perhaps he meant.

Nylth springs to her feet. "...you wanna go make out in the stairwell?"

Hasti stares, blushing. "...Yeah, okay."


	10. Lyric and Limerick (dirty songs and poetry, thankfully non-canon)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A series of jokey limericks I wrote for each member of our main group. As well, a short song sung in the temples of Gond... and the version the rowdy teens rewrote to better suit their, ah, sensibilities.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Contains sexual content. Do not ingest orally, or at all. I think I finished tweaking these on... 23 December 2019. The PCs who are the subjects of each of these limericks belong to their creators (Gandryl to [Chay](https://twitter.com/RavenBohique), Cash to [Funn](https://twitter.com/funn_ybone), and Teine to [MiaGhost](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MiaGhost/).)

A priestess of Gond got quite thorny  
When Cash let her sleep until morny.  
'Your chivalry's fine,'  
'but I drank too much wine!'  
'Why does booze make me sleepy, not horny?'  
---  
There once was a birdman so cheeky,  
in explaining why he looked so peaky,  
'I hope he's not dead'  
'For I rather need head'  
'Aarakocra, you see, are quite freaky.'  
From Gandryl, Nylth wanted to ferret  
His secret to vim, if he'd share it.  
'It's nothin' to covet,'  
'Just know where to shove it!'  
She wondered where he got the carrot.  
A gnome was obsessed with the eyeballs  
of her conquests, and kept them in highballs.  
But for insects in vials  
she got credit card trials,  
and got them all out of her Skymalls.  
Poor Cash was feeling quite frantic  
For she ruined an evening romantic.  
Because after some sass,  
Nylth had felt up her ass  
And she bucked Blue into the Atlantic.  
  
\--

And here's that song. It's a hymn, sang in churches of Gond during the Tithing of Saint Cirilian, a month-long holiday based on an event which is the subject of the song. (Young priests go out into the fields of their communities and help with farming tasks, because a Saint helped an under-staffed farmer birth some cows in antiquity.) On the left, the 'official' text of the hymn, and on the right, the... other version.

The Hymn of Saint Cirilian

We priests of Gond, we smiths of copper  
Mending hearth and tending fire  
be we each but saint or pauper  
sharpen body, serve the shire | We priests of Gond, up to our eyeballs  
Mending hearth and tending fire  
Even if we're slightly ribald  
Then at least we serve the shire   
---|---  
[Praise Cirilian, Saint Cirilian!]  
[Praise Cirilian, Saint Cirilian!] | [Praise Cirilian, Saint Cirilian!]  
[Praise Cirilian, Saint Cirilian!]  
These, the footsteps of Cirilian  
Building new and making whole  
In our vestments of vermilion  
Stoke the forges of the soul | Boastful whiner, old Cirilian  
Annoying Pilgrims is our goal  
With this scutwork times a billion  
Yankin' out another foal  
Sought he forth from Kefran borders  
Traveled he, to homestead bound  
Taken through the growing quarters  
Cornfield passed, and pasture found | Gee, they sure love barkin' orders  
Ancient tutors, priests so round  
Sitting here on their hindquarters  
Forcing youngsters out of town!  
[Praise Cirilian, Saint Cirilian!]  
[Praise Cirilian, Saint Cirilian!] | [Fuck Cirilian, fuck Cirilian!]  
[Fuck Cirilian, fuck Cirilian!]  
Seeking fences he for mending  
Came across a dire need  
[Tho] he tired and day was ending  
A call to arms that he did heed | [. . .]  
[. . .] | Ah, the luck of Saint Cirilian  
Found the farmer's wife inside  
Feeling throbbing in his pinion  
For she cast her legs so wide  
  
And so on, and so on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my god i've written so much weird shit for this campaign


	11. Sometimes Your Wife Just Wakes Up At 4 AM And Goes Bat Shit With The Voices For No Reason (flash fiction, non-canon)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nylth's mind has been widening to the possibilities as of late, and she's finally hearing the grand designs she's felt deserved for quite a few years. This chapter has a content warning for mental illness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally written 2 March 2020. Cash was created, and is played, by [Funn](https://twitter.com/funn_ybone).

Nylth awoke with a gasp, brow beaded in sweat. She sat up in her bed, in her own home, and brushed her hair from its dishevelment over a horn. In the lowlight, she could see Cash, sleeping next to her; her wife of three years, yes. They'd done what they had needed to do, so they had set out to build a quaint castle, raise a family together, yes. The first part of that? It had gone swimmingly, as town planners tended to look kindly on lubricating a reelection fund with a few platinum, and the mason's guild accepted a couple diamonds here and there. The latter part of the plan had stalled, though.

But today, Nylth's eyes flicked in her sockets, to and fro, as though she were reading blueprint notations drawn in the afterglow of the lantern she lit as she tossed her feet out of the bed. She threw on some sturdy workpants, grabbed her smith's apron from the hook on the wall by the door, and prepared to make her exit, not noticing Cash beginning to stir with a complaining murmur.

The stars twinkled their uncountable gyre against the sussurating predawn sky as Cash plodded outside, onto the stonework roof above their first-floor atrium. She had always felt discomfited by the thought of living in a proper gothic edifice like this, but the little Wife had insisted, and Cash learned early on that when Nylth needed to follow her passions sometimes all she could do was watch. She'd become more forceful over the last few years, louder and more strident, but Cash had chalked it up to the brashness of pride and the newfound fervor of attachment to her people. But as she passed from the second floor hallway out onto the balcony overlooking the lake, all she heard was the pitched clank of metal against stone interrupting the birdsongs even before she could process her partner's actions.

Nylth dug at the masonry with a miner's pick, right at the center of the roof.

"I saw it, Cash. In my dreams, I've been given a sign."

"S'zat so, honeybun?"

"He showed me. Finally, a sign. It whirled, in my dream, great clockwork motions cantilevering and spinning against each other in a grand celestial alignment. I'm going to build an orrery, isn't that wonderful?"

Her next swing finally broke mortar, sending a spray of granite over the banister with a noise loud enough to make Cash wince. She grins over a shoulder, blankish eyes redoubling in width even as Cash noticed the deep creases underneath. She wondered exactly how little Nylth had even slept, and chewed on her tongue. "Seems a bit late to be startin' a project, lemurtits. Why don't we just start on a garden tomorrow mornin'? Plant some tomaytas."

"No-- no. Has to be now, no. Just imagine it-- I saw the plans, with the great gears turning in synchrony. Layers of differentials splaying the motion of moons and planets around the sun, all in a scale so big it fills this whole balcony. It'll be lovely. He told me to build it."

"Mmkay." Cash loped off with a yawn, back towards the arched door into the hall. "I'll go... make you some coffee, I guess." She scratched at her underarm, trying to ignore the painful tightness of worry beginning to wind itself around her chest.

"Nng." Nylth took another swing at the cracked brick.


	12. The Farmhouse (vignette, non-canon)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cash owns a farmhouse. Nylth tries to snitch food from the same. Simple pleasures, _mais non_?  
> This vignette contains nudity and a slight bit of sauciness. You're welcome.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first part of this was written originally on the 3rd of April, 2020. I created the latter half on the 13th of May, 2020. Cash is [Funn](https://twitter.com/funn_ybone)'s.

The ripe pink juice bursts from the split skin of the tomato, dressing her teeth in white seedlets and fleshpulp. A thin rivulet rolls down the corner of her deep blue mouth, and she chews slowly, eyes squeezing closed, savoring.

Once again, that girl is stealing your tomatoes, right off the vine. You planted those last May in anticipation of a few nice garden salads, but their number has been dwindling ever since they plumped, the hard green spheres fading slowly to red as they engorged and drooped low on the vine. This time, however, you've caught her in the act, and watched her feast on your produce out the window.

\--

You drop the screen door behind you with a clatter. She jumps with the noise, drooped winglets juddering as her shoulders hunch. Giant red eyes whirl toward you and flick open as she turns her head.

"So you're the lit'lun who's been stealin' my tomaytas. I reckoned it was one of the local deer, but nope, guess it was some other horned critter."

Her eyelids bat in sluggish recognition. She takes a step back, but you stride over to her, hand catching her by the offending wrist. She grips the half-eaten fruit tighter, but you smile, hooking your other thumb under the strap of your overalls to rest against bare skin underneath.

"S'alright! They're meant to be enjoyed. I just want to make sure you're not gonna waste even the slightest drop."

You bring a hooked finger under her chin. As you guide her face up, you tilt it sideways to examine the glistening trail of juice escaping towards her thin neck. She's about your age, you figure, but you have a good six inches on her, nevermind the great spiraling ramhorns. From her thin shoulders and stooping posture, you gather she's more used to snitching food around the edges of the local fields than bartering for meals.

Your smile breaks to a grin.

Your thumb catches the droplet as it moves across her skin, gathering the whole trail to linger expectantly just off of her lips. She shivers as you skim up her neck and around her jaw. Her hot breaths quicken, bathing your hand in summer air.

"Don't be shy, now."

Pert pink tongue darts out of her mouth, length drawing against the callused ridges of your thumb. Her lips part, chest almost heaving for breath as she draws back, scarlet glow enveloping her cheeks.

"There's plenty more where that came from, but you'd need to lend a hand to earn it. I've got a spare room, too, which I suspect you might need likewise." You nod your head towards the farmhouse, and she shuffles alongside you, still watching you speak. "Cash Diamond," you say, extending a wetted hand to shake. "Proprietor of these here estates."

The blue girl gives a wan smile, taking your hand in hers. "Nylth."

* * *

Just past daybreak the next day, the first probing fingers of golden light creep over the prairie kitchen windowsill of Diamond Ranch, bathing the bare skin of its white-haired farmer in the warmth of a spring morning. She raps a fresh egg against the countertop, and with a practiced flick of the wrist splits it between thumb and palm, but the yolk dribbles out of the fissure and Cash lets it splatter with a chuckle into the mixing bowl.

"Dammit," she mutters. "Scrambled it is. Again."

She pours it into the pan, rolling soft yellow curds into shape. The comfortable scent and sizzle of butter fills the room, and Cash takes a moment to appreciate it with a heady breath. Then she adds a solid handful of green onions, along with some homemade cheddar cheese.

Behind her, a rustle, and the muted clank of a potrack disturbed. Cash doesn't turn, but instead splits a second egg into the bowl, then a third, adds a dollop of fresh milk and a dash of salt, and only looks when she hears an effortful grunt from the unexpected guest.

Her little blue vandal hunches behind her, having slipped the Farmer Thornton's sourdough from its burlap, and wrestles off a hunk of it with grubby little nails. Each drives a pockmark into the supple crust, and Cash lopes over, putting out her hand to receive the manhandled loaf.

"I'm glad yer gettin' somethin' to eat, this mornin'. Long day ahead of us, you'll need the fuel."

The tiefling blinks, drawing the bread closer to her body, and chews her appropriated portion with an apprehensive, wide-eyed glance.

"Not gonna hurt ya'. Was gonna show you how to get a piece off, see?" Cash points to the cutting board behind Nylth's back, and she turns, regards it. "Without mangling it fer the rest of us. Here."

Her arms wrap around blue shoulders, body abutting the slender nightshirt caped around the smaller girl's biceps. She nestles her head against one long blue ear, letting her unruly mass hair act as a cushion between, but still able to feel the heat radiating off of Nylth's neck. She takes each blue hand in one of her own, motioning one to the knife, and the other to stabilize the loaf of bread. Encompassing fingers move in concert: the slow rasp of a serrated edge against the hard crust takes little enough force that Cash can merely steer and instruct, other hand safely out of its path. She nabs the first slice, slightly misshapen. "And this one's fer me."

She smiles, draws back. "I'm makin' you some eggs, too. Toss a few chunks of that nice tomayta in there, and that's good eats."

The blue girl blinks, watching her. An unreadable expression curls across her pursed mouth and wide eyes.

"What is it?" Her guest looks down, and Cash finally catches on. She chuckles. "Oh, yeah. Maybe that's a little offputting, huh."

Cash raises her arms and regards herself: gray skin plunging just as far as the eye can see, just as Sehanine made her, with the only thing girdling her modesty being a loose-tied black apron to keep oilspatters from hitting sensitive spots. in the front, in bold white font, it declares:  
Y I F F  
T H E  
C O O K.  
It was a novelty gift from her sister, one Christmas, in thanks for a starter kit of herb seeds for a windowbox in her big-city apartment.

"No," Nylth finally squeaks, voice quiet. "Just funny."

Cash folds her arms down, bracing her knuckles against bare hips. "If you'd rather I go change, I can before we eat. S'just the same to me."

"No. I like this, really." Nylth sneaks towards Cash again, grin turning impish, and straightens herself up with a smile. She plants a fangy, crumb-laden kiss on Cash's lips, tail flicking and face awash with warm, blooming desire.

"So forward! I'd not expected this sort of advances out of you, young lady."

"Says the woman who shoved her fingers in my mouth yesterday."

"Alright, alright, _too-shay_ , point taken. Now grab you some eggs, we gotta get out to water the front garden and check the henhouse."


	13. More Embarrassing Metaphors About Flowers and Birds (vignette, probably not canon)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nylth learns that lesbians.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written 5 June 2020.

Nylth hefted a sigh, twinned fingers edging up the pads of her glasses to scrub exhausted bruises from her nosebridge. She tapped the haft of her pen against the face of her pocketwatch, nicked ring of brushed silver illuminating the time: half past eleven.

Just the perfect way to spend my entire night, she thought. I'll be awake in six hours to help this week's Samaritans cut fresh berries and start the wheat porridges. But instead of sleeping, here I sit-- drudging away at another pile of Codicils, trying to futilely notate any novel thoughts or life records for the archives.

The night had stretched long enough that the handwriting on every page had all run together in great illegible smears, and aside from the little doodles and abstract marginalia she could barely bring her eyes to focus. Over the evening, she had barely managed to skim the first quarter of one of the three books she'd hoped to finish tonight. The flame of her sconced lantern flagged, silently complaining for oil.

It wasn't her fault she was so distractible! Girls of 13 need to find more stimulating ways to spend their time. Yes, reading through the lifelong journals and intimate exploits of her fellow Gondites mattered immensely-- not just because the elder priests told her it must, but because she had so much to learn, and the sooner she took to their Codicils to find that knowledge the sooner she'd earn her own and strike out into the world. But the actual time spent on it dragged on and on so on a warm summer's night like this, and the air in the basement library was so utterly stagnant, and the stultifying wheeze of the doors just upstairs was beginning to slow as the last residents of the Ministration wing found their way to bed, and soon every stone of the Temple would be silent in its resting place.

Better to get to bed than to collapse where I sit, she pondered. If Kenrist finds me down here again come morning he'll use my tail for a jumprope. She thumbed open the second book, fiddling as she prepared to call her evening's work unfinished, and idly skimmed the page, when.

_my hair between her fingers like how she would touch_  
_the wings of a butterfly, and braided the stems of cornflowers_  
_there. She kissed me, and on her lips danced and thrummed_  
_the song of summer. May the whole world know that I, Acolyte_  
_Thaedra, and she, Urvi Skælsborn, are two women in love, and_  
_though she, a dwarf in gingham raised a cowmaid, and I, a tiefling_  
_priestess in my dusty frockcoat and a smile and nowt more Gond_  
_gave me, can tumbledown together this hillside of dandelions_  
_laughing just in time for the breathless gasps escaping from her_

Nylth snapped the book closed once more, heart clambering for air up through her throat. She piled up the books and, without a second glance to their reshelving cart, scooted them into her bag.

This was not even a peccadillo, of course. The Temple was her home, and the library was the Temple, so she was free to borrow and study any tome she wanted, Codicils especially. Priests passed had no secrets, after all, but the sudden throb just behind Nylth's temples made her unable to escape the precise reason why this one had caught her interest.

But just as she burst from the archives, she charged headlong into her father-of-sorts, with enough vigor to become momentarily entangled in the folds of his great cassock. That's what she always called him, to company. My father-of-sorts, because when she said 'father' they pressed her for explanations and when she said San they said San who.

She had grown so much, this year, but even still she barely came up to his sternum on tiptoes. The curls of his great triangular beard just brushed the top of her head, and he bothered the few wisps of whitish hair still clinging to his scalp and smiled at his adoptive daughter.

"Nylth," he began, "I was just coming to find you. I knew you were dawdling up late this evening, but--"

"No time," she murmured, "m'borrowing these Codes so I can..."

Huge red eyes blinked. She hadn't had time to think of a convincing lie, because she hadn't realized she might need one.

"Is everything alright, indigo bunting?"

Nylth knew that look of consternation well: between the late hour and her evasive eyeballs, dancing every which-way to avoid his own, he had seen through her deception before it had even been spoken.

"Did you know her? Acolyte Thaedra? She lived here, only died maybe fifty years ago. One of these is her Codex."

San's jowl pulled back in amused ponderance. "Oh, Chaste Thaedra? I think we were acquainted, yes. Never suffered fools, took to her duties well, seemed to especially love the times of year that would bring her down to the farmlands around town. She worked over in the Forge-halls, in the duties your friend Dobrun has now, so we never spent more than a rare mealtime in polite conversation. She was kind, spoke well of her wife."

"Wife. Uh-huh."

San's eyebrows arch. "Were your evening's duties illuminating?"

\--

Though an unpracticed thaumaturge, Nylth balanced a tiny matchflame at the end of her finger, and the light bloomed under the mound of blankets domed over her bed in the Pilgrim's billet.

Nylth's taste for fictive adventures had always mirrored her taste for sweets: too cloying, too singular and flat, too unbelievable. The sweets, she had fed to her father, and he gave her his bitter chocolates, because when she asked what he thought of them he laughed and said that they 'built character'.

Never you mind, she always thought. Dry periodicals and darkest chocolates for me, sweets and love stories for you.

But this? This was a woman speaking to her from the past-- yes, not just the past, but the past of her own building, and a tiefling like her, and--

But it wasn't just that, no. There was something more, the way she talked about that woman.

She flipped the book open again, ran her short blue fingers along the chicken-scratched penlines of each page as she drank it in. She read about Urvi, her coarse blondish hair and comely beard tickling Chaste's face as they came together, spent their youths apart but happy. She read about how the tiefling pushed for housing separate from the church upon earning her Codicil, simply to live with the woman she loved.

Nylth knew about sex, of course. San had given her The Talk in frank language, and showed her the Gond-standard materials; she had made the requisite faces of disgust, taken the pages to the Archives, and pored over diagrams and dry factoids about birth.

But isn't it funny how they always forget to mention love? That even the forward Gondists, who teach protections and care and exploration and safety, forget to mention that at its core, love hefts ships into the air out of the seawrack, and makes watches run without clockwork.

Nylth had once been chased around the chapelyard during a libertine hour, by a little girl adamant that she deserved to kiss the tiefling child's face, and San had intervened, not as her father but as an agent of their moral education. He had given the little halfdrowling a lesson that affection was very good, but that her face needed to end where Nylth's began, and that disinterest needed to be regarded as sacrosanct. The little girl had nodded, and apologized, but Nylth had thought nothing of it, certainly not in the heady terms capable a newly-minted teenager.

Therein lies the benefit, Nylth thought, to seeing all their lives. The unvarnished thoughts, the grand inventions, the progress of a mind over a whole career, unveiled in a diary: none of that matters on the same scale as this.

That was the day when Nylth discovered the spark.


End file.
